>>>>I got an email from a new customer that "Windows XP VM you requested is built and online". VM is, of course, virtual machine. I have not yet worked with a Virtual Machine and I don't want to show my ignorance to the customer. So my question is, when I go to their site to do the installation of my VFP and ASP.NET applications, what will I be dealing with in terms of user interface? Will this XP VM box look to me just like any other XP machine? That is, will I be able to go to Windows Explorer and create folders, copy files? Go to IIS and create a Virtual Directory?
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>>>>Thank you in advance for any help.
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>>>As long as you have the rights on the virtual machine, you should be able to do anything you could do on a physical machine (aside from break hardware).
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>>>You'll be working on it through Remote Desktop or similar remote control package. It will appear just like any other machine.
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>>Thank you, Bill. I know this is a not fair question since you didn't build this VM PC. But why do you think they (the customer) would choose to use VM instead of just setting up an XP as web server and host of the application?
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>>UPDATE. What I mean by my question is what are the advantages of using VM XP?
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>Virtual machines are much easier to restore - they simply exist as a couple of files on a virtual server. If the VM dies or needs to be reset to a specific state, you can copy the files that you (hopefully) backed up at that state and you are done.
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>You can run several virtual machines on one reasonable PC or server.
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>The virtual machines can be various operating systems all running on the same hardware.
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>I use virtual machines as both test and production machines.

Thank you very much for the explanation. I am going to look into maybe building one of those in my office.