Sometimes your kids or wife wanted to use the computer, but you are using it (and there's only one computer! yes, life is that hard hehe..) This next trick is surely fun thing to do with your dual monitor and a couple of spare keyboard and mouse. Psst.. that way, you can virtually have 2 computers!
I don't know about other Virtual Machine, but I'm using VirtualBox. Maybe VMWare or Parallel Desktop can do it too, I haven't tried it. Let me know if anyone knows. (FYI, I'm doing it on my MacBook Pro running Leopard and Windows XP64).
What you need:
Ok, let's begin!
Follow up:
Now if your VirtualBox Machine is ready and running,
connect the USB mouse and select from VirtualBox VM menu (not VirtualBox menu) Devices - USB Devices - (mouse driver) like this (notice there are 2 mouse driver? just select one to be use on Guest OS):
next, click on Machine menu (using the other mouse or trackpad) and choose Disable Mouse Integration.. (to Enable it?)
Although it feels like we now have 2 "computers", the truth is, it still only ONE computer. So don't push it too hard by playing multiplayer game! (Except maybe you are running on Quad Core Processor with 16Gigs of RAM and a thousand Dollars GPU!) This setup is useful for others to check emails, light-browsing, or just chatting.
Anyway, here's how I set the "Virtually Two in One Computer" (video on YouTube). Enjoy!