Jordan,
There are no hoops to jump through with VMWare Player (the free one).
Once the player is installed, all you need to do is install a copy of XP
(or any other version of Windows, probably DOS, even Linux) within it.
The tools that are installed with Player allow you to use the printers
and network connections of your Win 7 installation, and you can copy/cut
and paste between your virtualized XP (or any other OS you wish to
install) and your Win 7 machine and vice versa. It costs nothing, takes
probably an hour of your time, and, if you don't like it, simply
uninstall it. Couldn't be simpler.
Best,
William TeBrake
UMaine History Emeritus
On 11/5/2013 10:37 AM, J R FOX wrote:
For the moment, the successes I've had going with XP Mode on that
laptop outweigh switching to a different VM solution, which would
almost certainly entail jumping through a bunch of extra hoops, and
plenty of extra work. But that could change too.
Jordan