I've met more than a couple of programmers who are otherwise so computer illiterate that you pretty much have to walk them over and sit them down in front of a text editor.
Most people around here seem to have somewhat decent system-admin skills, but there's also lots of students and even professionals who just haven't messed around with virtualization very much.
I'm pretty good at using VMWare to set up Linux systems in Windows, but I haven't tried the opposite yet. Sure, I could probably figure it out, but it's nice to have this guide to fall back on if something goes wrong.
> I've met more than a couple of programmers who are otherwise so computer illiterate
I have not witnessed this myself but I have heard countless stories from friends/colleagues in the same vein - there seems to be indeed a big gap between one's coding abilities and the overall computing knowledge.
I think turning off mouse integration in virtualbox helps with the tablet issues. I use virtual box for Photoshop and light wave 3d, and the mouse integration feature always upset how the program read the cursors coordinates. You just have to remember to use the keyboard shortcut to turn it on again before trying to move your mouse back to a host program.