Late reply to one of the earlier posts on this subject. I had asked a question about how to get a installation of linux running in a vm, and, I have to say that I did get it working. It Turned out to be very easy, but, I was wondering about sound support in the vm as I was just using speakup through my serial port. It was kind of cool when I got it working as I was on skype on the windows host and it never gave me any trouble, but, I am guessing that getting some sort of software synth working would not work unless I had another soundcard to rout it through? I am not even sure if I can find drivers for my soundcard that is built into this laptop, but, that is a question for another time I suppose. If someone can tell me more about how this kind of thing works, that would be wonderful. I noticed that someone did get software speech going with a vm, so, figured I would ask. Thanks bunches.