Thanks. I wasn't sure how "busy" it would be, or if people would like it. :)
MS is making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be. Their usual tactic is to make little roadblocks that make migrating away from Windows difficult. While the company has continued to grow, they seem a lot less sure-footed than they used to. I think they got a little cocky when they got on top, and Google totally blindsided them. For all the talk about how Google has a better search engine, and they do have an excellent quality one, I think when they made the applet so you don't have to go to their site, and they created the Google toolbar so you could search without first having to surf to their site were big reasons for their success.
The non-virtualization requirement is for a business reason, not a technical one. I've never seen MS get overly concerned about a user having problems. I was on the old MS Network before I had broadband, and they had an MS Network program you could download for free that was supposed to "optimize your system" for performance with MSN. It crashed my whole system, and MS wouldn't even talk to me about it because my copy of Windows was OEM. They wanted me to buy a $125 ticket to talk to their technical people about the issue. That was the start of my migration away from MS. Prior to that, I'd been pro-MS all the way. I was a member of their development network, used MSN, and always used the MS product, even if there was a competitor. I used Frontpage to build web sites, etc. As I got away from Windows, I realized just how clunky it was. I still use the Mac version of MS Office, so I'm not one of those "MS will NEVER be on my computer people, but there are other options, and the ones I've found work a lot better for me.