I’ve been using Ubuntu Linux as my operating system of choice on my home PC for quite a while now. I think it was Xmas 2004 when I finally lost patience with my Windows XP Home experience after accidentally – and, admittedly, stupidly – “cleaning” out my Windows folder of essential system files.
Anyway, after a few false starts – Linux, and even the specially designed to be user-friendly Ubuntu flavour back then, was a sharp learning curve – I managed to get up and running, mostly thanks to the incredibly helpful Ubuntu users community support forums.
One of many Windows’ annoyances is that it tries to do pretty much everything for you by assuming that you are too stupid to choose your preferences for yourself. But I seem to recall that three or four years ago Ubuntu did not automatically recognise your internet connection, for one. That was quite a major drawback! Mind you, I also recall having a bit of trouble getting connected with Windows Vista this year!!
To cut a long story short, for a long time I tried dual-booting Windows and Ubuntu, but found that I only ever really used Ubuntu and that Windows was just hogging a lot of my hard drive (which was then only 20GB). So, last year I got rid of Windows altogether. I was back to dual-booting again this year when I got my new PC (thanks, Dad!), which had Vista pre-installed and a 250GB hard drive. It was quite useful to be able to synchronise my Pocket PC again, which I use as my work diary and personal phone contacts, but after installing all the necessary firewall, anti-virus and ant-spyware Vista-compatible freeware, it was quite painful to use even with 1GB RAM.
I experimented with vitualising Vista in Ubuntu and vice versa using VMWare and VirtualPC, but with little success – virtual Ubuntu was even slower running on my Vista setup and I couldn’t get Vista to work on Ubuntu. Then I came across VirtualBox thanks to this tutorial using the Open Source Edition. The problem with the OSE is that it doesn’t support USB connections, so no good for synchronising my Pocket PC.
On to the Personal Edition of VirtualBox. After a lot more fiddling about with various website howto’s and guides listed below, I managed to get my Vista installed and running. Subsequently I read the manual and – with hindsight – that would be a good place to start for anyone looking to set up Virtual Box for the first time 
One downside, is that running Virtual Windows messes up your clipboard, so that if you copy and paste in Ubuntu it doesn’t work and comes out Chinese like this: 俈䤰
For anyone interested in trying the same, here are a few links that might help:
VirtualBox
Create and Manage Virtual Machines Using VirtualBox –…
jhcore.com » Vista on Ubuntu Using VirtualBox
A Simple Man, A Complex Mind » Ubuntu
Running Vista Inside VMWare on Ubuntu– The Glass is Too Big
Installing Virtualbox and Windows in Ubuntu: Arun’s Blog
Installing Guest Additions For Ubuntu Guests in VirtualBox …