Dave
I've just had one of those WOW moments.
I know that your intended use and my intended use for a virtual machine environment are not the same but I'd like to share this as a continuation of the thread as I feel its a valulable comment for anyone else considering a VM environment..
I want a Linux environment so that I can explore IRAF - the stuff that the professional sphere use. I aint got too far (I'm making slow, very slow, incremental steps).
A requirement (rather more of a strong recommendation) of an IRAF environment is that you shouldn't have to click a window to activate. Hover over part of a window and its up-front and personal. Makes for less work and one doesn't have to keep moving windows around to see what you are doing. For IRAF work it is a better way of working.
I attached a CRT as a secondary screen to my laptop (haven't had a working desktop in years). The motivation was to compare different images of Mars that I captured early Thursday morning. I wanted to compare the results of stacking different subsets of the entire 8 minute capture.
Some results were noticeably inferior and some results were indistingushable on the laptop - hence motivation to see the images on a CRT. I now fully appreciate others' comments on why you can't use LCD screens for image processing.
I decided to see what a VM would look like - and I was impressed. I put the VM in Full Screen mode on the secondary monitor and there's where the WOW comes in.
I have two screens - for two machines and the VM is in full screen mode on the secondary CRT monitor and I just have to move the mouse from the lap top to the IRAF environment and whatever app I'm hovering over pops up without a single click. Normally when one has both Windows apps and the VM visible at the same time one needs to click to give focus to the VM. But when the VM is full screen on a secondary monitor one doesn't. That's magic.
Mark
  