>As Eric states, VPC is just a PC within a PC. Think of it as a separate machine, except it just so happens to live on the same hardware. A file on your system holds the virtual hard drive for a particular VPC, making it easy to copy to another system or clone it. For example, I have a bunch of VPCs set up: a clean (ie. nothing else installed) Vista, a clean XP, Vista with various things installed, XP with various things installed, etc. To create a new VPC, I just copy the files for one of the clean VPCs to a new folder, then tell the Virtual PC manager about the new VPC.
>
>I was a little bit nervous about using at first too, but it's really a piece of cake to implement. Give it a try; you'll wonder why you waited.
>
>Doug


Excellent explanation. I am about to purchase a new desktop for home. My current one is 4-1/2 years old, XP, single-core. I plan to use the new one for gaming too so it will be a souped up dual core with 4gb RAM and big disks. Excellent too for VPC.

The system will come with Vista preinstalled. I plan to use VPC not only for betas but also so I can share Vista and XP as some of my old software I'm afraid might not work very well with Vista. I have seen Vista demos many times but I do not have it at work and never had a system that could handle it at home.

Question: Should I make Vista my main OS and install XP in VPC virtual drives or viceversa?
[Update]: After thinking about it, I guess that would be the best. It will take a little getting used to but it should be fine.

What version of Vista to get is the next quandary. The system comes preinstalled with the lowest version. I do not need the entertainment and home threatre options. As long as I can do networking properly in the home-lan I'm fine.