[vecplane]

Please forgive my ignorance - what are the benefits of this approach, as opposed to Remote Desktop into a Windows machine?

[ErneX]

The ability to have multiple VMs with many different operating systems.

[Melatonic]

But you could easily do that with ESXi free running on your home desktop, running multiple VM's (lets say Windows, linux, BSD, etc etc) and then RDP from a mobile laptop to any of those VM's.

[lstamour]

Not needing to run Windows 24/7 to support non-Windows work - one practical benefit is that you might not need to install as many security patches or they might install faster. Another reason might be to avoid running Windows entirely ;-)