[SXX]

You can save a lot of disk space if you'll use backing files. E.g you can have one base Windows disk image that used by any number of VMs configured differently. So you basically only need like 5-15GB for compressed Windows image and then each VM configuration will only take another 1-2GB at most.

Personally use it with QEMU / KVM now, but totally sure VMWare had backing files support too.

[ashmud]

VMware supports "parent" vmdk files. The leaf-node "child" vmdk will diff based on the ancestors. VMware Player does support this. The VMware implementation of XPMode uses it. You can use vdiskmanager to convert the root vmdk to sparse files, which leaves the main vmdk file with just the configuration in it. This makes it much easier to set up the parent-child relationship than monolithic vmdk.

[matthewmacleod]

I guess the problem there is that you need different Windows versions too – and they're all pretty chunky! It definitely helps though, and AFAIK all virtualisation tools have support.

[SXX]

I believe that Windows 7 would be enough for anything except Edge. E.g you can install IE6 in XP compatability mode for sure.

Suppose there may be issues with crap like ActiveX, but most of people I know just worry about how page looks like and I don't believe rendering of IE11 on Win7 and Win8 would be different. Though I'm not expert.

[talmand]

Just curious, how do you install IE6 in Win7?

[bskap]

By using the "XP Mode" VM.

[talmand]

So, that is not installing IE6 in Win7. That's installing IE6 in WinXP that's running as a VM in Win7.

[blinkingled]

Gee, I just recently hated upon Qemu/KVM for not having the equivalent of Hyper-V differencing disks! Great to know this exists as this will save me quite a bit of disk space on my CentOS VMs.