VirtualPC -- A Good Alternative?

Hello all. Like most people, I pretty much do a yearly computer wipe, but also with all the encoding I do the time it takes to get things to where I want them again is just ungodly long. I was thinking, why not just get a copy of VirtualPC and do all my encoding on that? I figure : 1. Don't have to worry about system wipes. 2. Trivial to backup. 3. Trivial to test bleeding edge things without hosing my system (just copy the .vpc file and go) 4. Can clone all my settings onto any PC. etc . . The one downside appears to be proformance. If I decide to do this, how much of a hit are we talking about?

In short. Substantial. What you meant to think of were ghost images. Install everything how you want it. Then back it up. If anything goes awry just restore the backup and viola.

Yes, Ghost images are cool, but not all that useful - I also reinstall once a year, and new versions of all the programs I want are always out so I always have to start from scratch anyway :/ Just the curse of using Windows, I suppose. One of these days I'll get around to converting my whole setup to Linux, but not just yet .....

The new version of ghost "claims" to do incremental backups .... i haven't tested it personally but the logic makes ghostimages for restore a little quicker, especially if your system changed quite a bit since the last ghost... although, all of use who do incremental / differencial backups know the problems w/ them :)

I usually make one ghost right after installing the OS and one more after installing updates and maybe some core software. Usually one of them is safe and quick to go back to for a nuke&pave if needed. - Tom