Is this the answer to Chris Skinner's Vista woes?

You may recall that Chris has some issues with Vista - well maybe I have a workaround. 

There are one or two applications I still need Windows to run - various SQL server admin tools and the like - so I've been keeping my old laptop going - but it takes an age to boot up and makes a noise like a hairdryer. It also burns paint off the wall behind it. Warms the room nicely tho'.

So - with quite low expectations I thought I'd try installing XP on VMWare fusion on my Macbook to see if it worked. It's astonishingly good. Windows installed as painlessly as is possible and worked instantly with all the Mac hardware - running in a window of it's own on the Mac desktop. The VPN to our office worked so I could use remote desktop on the virtual machine to control our servers - tho' this started to get confusing. 

What's more - when you're done you just suspend it - and it's off and saved. Restart it next time you want it and and it's three or four seconds to come back exactly as it was. You can take snapshots too, just in case you want to do mad things and then undo them. You can move and backup your virtual machines easily as they're basically one big packaged file.

You can either run your virtual machine in a window of its own or use "unity" where the Windows apps are properly integrated - put them in the Dock if you like. I found that a bit too disturbing. 

Of course to do all this you do need a valid Windows licence key, a Mac and a copy of VMware - but given you could run several virtual machines with different OS - and have a lovely time doing it - it's worth considering.