[DeepDuh]

Did you also update your XP to the latest service packs and patches? My updated XP in a VM currently runs at 780MB after one morning of very light usage. It has only one application open at 100MB.

Also, yes, virtualization wasn't always needed, but without it anything slightly CPU intensive will be awfully slow. I can see it working for CLI-only linux/bsd systems, but not much else. Do you ever compile something bigger on your guest systems as an example?