The main requirement is enough RAM for two operating systems plus some extra for the virtualization system. The CPU is less important. I run Windows XP Pro as a virtual system on a Linux host with VMware Workstation 6. It is a 5-year-old Athlon 3000+ box with 1 GB of RAM. I allocate 512 MB to Windows, which is about the minimum for XP. Current Linux distributions need at least 256 MB and VMware is something of a memory hog itself so 1 GB is about the minimum RAM for this setup. Windows is perhaps just a smidgen slower than it would be if running natively on the same hardware but the difference is minimal. It does not have much effect on the speed of Linux apps running simultaneously. Things bog down fast if you try to run more than one virtual system simultaneously but VMware is good at using multiple processors for this. I did some work which involved running up to 6 instances of FreeBSD simultaneously on an 8-core Xeon system with 4 GB RAM. Up to 6 it did not slow down much. Over 6 it got sludgy. Have fun! Mike

The Cowon iAudio 7 is compact, rugged, has superb audio quality and outstanding battery life. It has excellent tone controls and supports Ogg and FLAC encoding as well as MP3 and WMA. It has an FM radio and can record. You should get better earphones to go with it and for travel, you can't beat a noise isolating type. The Shure SLC2 is a good match for it. These have near audiophile sound quality and sound isolation as good as the big, expensive noise canceling types. This combination is vastly superior to any iPod model and you can get much more substantial discounts. http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/iaudio/7/ http://www.shure.com/ProAudio/Products/PersonalMonitorSystems/us_pro_earphones_content Happy Landings, Mike