Virtual Machines are nothing new. I provisioned my first KVM on a Linux machine probably 5 or 6 years ago, and it didn't go very well. You really had to understand how a collection of different parts fit together, and then have some luck to make it all work at once. My biggest problem was network settings - nothing ever seemed to work right.
Things really got better a couple of years ago. I started with VMWare, and was impressed with how well it all worked, but was really disappointed to realize that I couldn't provision my VM on one physical device, and then run it on another unless I bought a license. I settled on VirtualBox, because I need to run the same VM on either a Linux or a Windows host. I'm very impressed with how well things work - from sharing drives and clipboards to the ease with which networking and printing is handled. Just make sure you have your VMs set up to build and use the VirtualBox guest additions.
I now walk my VM on a passport drive between my home and work machines, and things run flawlessly. My work requires my hard drive to be encrypted, which is a good thing, because in the event that that my drive is lost or stolen, the data on it is safe. I also get multiple copies of my environment - one on each physical machine, and one on the backup drive. Having suffered a head crash on my work machine before and dealing with the re-building effort, I sleep well knowing that I have redundant versions of my machine.
In a similar way, I use a VM for all of my MOOCs. I've built up a set of notes and projects for 3 courses now, and this information is precious to me. My VM is a container for all of my things, and I don't worry about losing it.
In a few weeks I'm attending a hands-on lab to install and configure an OpenStack environment (http://www.meetup.com/OpenStack-New-York-Meetup/events/144883832/). This requires two VMs so that we can simulate working in a multi-node environment, all within a single laptop. So not only are VMs convenient and secure when encrypted, they allow you do do things that just can't practically be done with physical hardware. VMs have really become an essential part of my computing life, and I can't imagine working without them.
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