New life for old XP

Chris Bryant wrote:
The coolest thing, IMHO, is taking the hard drive out of the XP computer and running it as a virtual machine- not really easy, but possible. ( note the disclaimer). Easy to take a snapshot of the whole thing for backup, no need for installation, activation, etc.

Actually, this is what I did when upgrading to WIN 7 from WIN XP. I created a full image backup of WIN XP, saved in a format compatible with existing VM software. So can run my old WIN XP, with all programs in tact, in WIN 7 using VM.