To start with a disclaimer: I did not find this out myself. It was posted sometime last week on the dnj. I can't find it again, if anybody recognizes the post, please tell so. The guy needs a statue. May I repeat it ?

<Update>
The original post I read was by Jon Galloway on the asp.net blogs. Geoff had been pointing to it as well. That makes two statues. :>
</Update>

Virtual PC does have some overhead. But some of the last machines I created were sluggish inresponsive creatures. And they stayed like that regardless of the amount of RAM and processor resources they were given. These were virtual XP sp2 machines. The problem with them appeared to be the virtual machine additions. These improve interaction with the hosting OS and performance. Installing them is an option in the Virtual machine's menu.

Virtual PC has two related products, Virtual PC for the mac and now there is Virtual Server. The virtual hard disks created by the products are compatible. And so are the virtual machine additions. The additions coming with virtual server are an enormous improvement. They did magic to my virtual machines. An update of virtual PC will be out some time soon. For the moment you can upgrade you machines this way.

1. Download the virtual server trial
2. Part of the program installed is a Virtual Machine Additions folder
3. Load the ISO file found there in the CD drive of your virtual PC
4. Let the setup do its work
5. The setup will notify you it is upgrading the additions.

After resetiing the virtual machine it runs so much better. For an sp2 machine the results are no less than dramatic. Absolutely recomended.

Peter