2015-07-26 9:33 GMT-06:00 Todd Goodman <t...@bonedaddy.net>: > I like and use VirtualBox a lot (and agree it's easy to use.) > > But the performance and USB handling mean that I need Windows or other > OS' on bare metal most of the time. I don't know how well Dell's crap^W > support stuff runs in a VM. > The contrary experience here, USB has been the thing that got me to use VirtualBox many times, I have put usb drivers, printers, 3g modems, even adb trough the pass-trough feature of virtualbox, with no problems, in fact for some years for printing purposes I had to use a VM, and Virtualbox was the fastest to get working(click conect usb printer, install the windows drivers, print). I'm suspecting you also didn't run it with a very new computer, a server 2012 could run fine for testing some stuff, with 1 core limit and 512M RAM over here, using the virtualization capabilities of the processor. but I haven't dealt with DELL hardware.
BTW, to Alan, I have never had to call to support for any laptop, but do they really have someone that could know more than you to help? I would seriously suspect most cases you are just talking to a call center agent whom clearly isn't doing a job that requires much knowledge about computers, that may be just reading some general 'reboot your pc' type instructions, and would likely suggest you to go to a professional technician at the arise of the slightest seemingly serious problem. But I might be wrong, and dell support could be awesome(I hardly think so, I know a lot of people who give support at call centers).
