Virtualization

I explored this concept recently. The term virtualization was coined in 1960s and this refers to a virtual machine. Recently, you will more often see it being referred as platform virtualization.
In this particular thing, the host operating system shares its physical resources such as RAM, HDD with its guest operating system. The environment that is then created appears as if the guest operating system is independent of the host system.Thus, what you get in the end are two personal computers sharing common physical resources but very different from one another.
You may be wondering why I brought this topic up. It has been a common concern these days about the compatibility of vista with several programmes. To get rid of these problems, one can either use the compatibility wizard which may not have 100% success rate or reinstall xp. Reinstalling xp can be a bit of a problem as certain systems may not have the drivers readily available. Besides, even if the drivers are available, it would take ages to reinstall and often result in unforeseen issues. Virtualization is thus the answer.

The image that you see above shows you the real life implementation of virtualization. I had vista installed and using a virtual machine I could install xp without disturbing my vista. More importantly, I did not have to reinstall any of the drivers or fiddle with any bios settings. Sony Vaios could be a bit of doubt here as they do not have virtualization settings available.
This aspect is very useful for developers or students who face compatibility issues and don’t wish to do anything extreme to run their legacy applications.

Recommended software for windows: Microsoft Windows Virtual PC
Recommended software in general : VMWare, VMBox etc