I expected to keep my Win 7 laptop as a second machine just to run XP when needed. But it seems Hyper-V provides the equivalent functionality. I had to return my original laptop - hyper-v tripped it up - long story. But the new one's looking good - I put Hyper-V on it early to check it out.

But there's one gutting problem which makes it almost useless. I had kept my XP licence details from bygone days for just such an eventuality. But most XP licences (if not bought as an full disk) were OEM - and OEM is only able to run on the original machine. Not something I was aware of.

So now I have XP under Hyper-V counting down until it expires. I could install this once a month - or as needed - but it's easier to keep the separate laptop (and cross my fingers). XP licences are no longer sold - sad since they've provided a tool to run it.

I thought I'd ask what other people do - although I realise most of the people here probably have full licences from old installs.