I am an Ubuntu user myself and I do need to check designs on Internet Explorer 7 and I.E. 6 etc on the odd occasion which usually ends up with me using someones computer when they are in the middle of something!

I have tried many many times in the past to get virtualization working on my box to provide me access to Windows but its either been too complicated to set up or dog slow.

The slowness of virtualization seems to have been fixed with the advent of “magic” things within a CPU that let the virtual operating system talk directly to the CPU rather than going through software. I believe that all new Intel and AMD chips have such magic in them.

VirtualBox is free and open source and using Ubuntu its a simple apt-get away from installation.

To install Windows as a virtual operating system all you need to do is to follow the wizard through the steps, enable your CD drive and put your windows installation disk in. Click start is like pressing the power button on your new virtual computer. Its set to boot from the CD drive first and your away installing windows.

I have even managed to join my virtual computer to our Active Directory network so that I can login with my Active Directory credentials.

I gave my image VirtualBox created to a colleague and he was able to boot into the virtual Windows from his installation of VirtualBox, he uses Windows XP so was running XP on XP.

VirtualBox CD Drive emulation can also be given a disk image. So you can download an ISO of any of the free Operating systems out there and install it like you had burned the CD yourself. I downloaded a JeOS version of Ubuntu which was optimized for virtual environments, the ISO was around 150 meg in size and the installed OS took up about the same size. A virtual LAMP server is then an apt-get install lamp-server away. Great for safe server sandboxing.