Laptop Format

Now that I'm not using my laptop full-time for work with all of the development software on it, and it's running kind of slow, I thought it would be a good idea to format the system and reload the base OS (WinXP Pro) and base apps (MS Office Pro, Visio) and then use a Virtual Machine program to emulate the ColdFusion, VS.NET 2003 or VS.NET 2005 environments that I need sometimes. Of the virtual machine software (allows you to run a virtual computer just like an application on your current computer) I've found only two, VMWare Workstation 5.0 and Microsoft Virtual PC 2004. I've used VMWare Workstation back in the 2.0 and 3.0 days, but now they are up to 5.0 (and beta testing 5.5). I like the product and it seems to perform well. On the other hand, I have a free copy of Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 and not much experience with it, so I'm not sure which one I want to go with yet. In doing some research I found http://vpc.visualwin.com which lists all of the OS's that VPC will support (unofficial list of course). I also found this article at ARS Technica comparing the two products. As it stands now I'll try the VPC 2004 just because it won't cost me anything to try the full version. If I don't like it, I'll download the VMWare Workstation 5.0 evaluation to try.