Benefits of Working in a "VirtualBox"

I am often working in an Oracle VirtualBox image of Windows 7 rather than the original partition because that way I can be on my Linux partition at the same time. Some people might consider this strange because running VirtualBox with an OS like Windows 7 is a real resource hog for any system. But for me it only occupies about 1 GB of extra memory and some processor load.

But why take all these pains to work in a virtual environment? It surely has some benefits. Let me count them before you.

ONE.. OS within OS Yes. Your work environment might not be your favourite environment. Possibly you have to work on Linux but you like Windows 7; how about running your Linux inside your Windows 7! You can run your sweet Windows apps for listening to music, read comic strips, your RSS feed reader, and maybe watching movies in a tiny Windows Media Player. Still, you can work in your work environment at the same time. 

TWO.. Network Testing and All Many people work as penetration testers/cyber security and they need multiple OS's running simultaneously to test things in real time. Virtual Box comes handy again. 

THREE.. Saving The State How about closing your work environment while doing some stuff and when you open it the next day you find it the same way you left? All the reference, testing, coding and chat windows open exactly the way you had the last day. This is very easy and fast - actually just a menu option away in VirtualBox. 

FOUR.. Take Your PC Anywhere! You can simply keep the VDI or whatever hard disk image you have in your VirtualBox in a USB drive and move along with it. On another system all you really want is a version of Oracle VirtualBox installed - that's it! You can even make a portable copy of your VirtualBox application itself and make your "PC" completely mobile. Somewhat like this maybe: Sabayon Linux in a Portable VirtualBox That Runs from your USB Drive :) 

FIVE.. Super Easy Backups It is super easy to backup your VDI/VHD hard disk file to a compressed tar.bz2/zip/rar/b1/7z whatever archive you prefer to a smaller size and keep backups to everything you do. Even if your VirtualBox OS is infected badly with some malware you can always fall back to your last archive. This is not a problem with a Linux/BSD OS though. 

SIX.. My OS is My App You can set up a desktop icon (Windows) or launcher (Linux) of your virtual OS and use it like an app. The booting time for a virtual OS is proven to be much faster than a real OS. The only thing not really advisable to be done in a virtual OS is playing resource-demanding games like COD, Crysis and Battlefield.

So, these are just few benefits and there are many more depending on what objectives you have for working in a virtual OS.