some requirements to think about when using Vbox application or even just your current windows setup.....

alot of people have trouble understanding why there windows system crashes alot there was a common theme  called "the blue screen of death"
some people also wondered why there system became sugglish so here i would like to give you some pointers to think about when making your Virtual computers.....
Also this is for helping to try and make your windows only printer work with linux..

Windows 98:
requirements: - 32 meg of ram just for the base operating system
                        - 32 meg of ram for internal modem/wireless plugs/ethernet
                           (if you have all 3 then suggest disabling what u dont                                    need or if you would like all 3 you will need 32x3=96                                   meg)
                        - 32 meg of ram for anti-virus program
                        - 32 meg of ram for firewall (except where an external                                    router is used)
                        - 32 meg of ram for software driven printer (like the x1100
                           Lexmark Series)
                        - 32 meg for video card *
so based on the idea that we only want win98+the printer software+an internet connection (either a ethernet or wireless setup)
we require a Virtual computer with 96megs of ram to run, however if your not experienced at making closed up networks (ie your computers only talk to each other) then you will require a firewall and anti-virus also boosting your minimum ram requirement to 192megs of ram....

Windows XP:
Requirements Before service pack 2:

preffered minimum ram: 128 for Operating System only
anti-virus                              : 32
Firewall                                : 32
Software driven printer        : 32
wireless/ethernet connection: 32
video Cards   *                      :32
total                                   = 288 megs of ram

Requirements After Service Pack2:

operating System  minimum : 256
anti-virus                               : 32
Firewall                                  : 32
wireless/ethernet  (1 of)        : 32
video Cards *                         : 32
Software driven printer         : 32
Total                                    =416 megs of ram

requirements for Vista:

Well sorry dont even bother unless you have got around 4gig of ram,
the preffered base minimum of ram for vista is 2gig, I believe you can tweak this however you would lose all your pretty graphics setup and this might reduce it to 1 gig of ram but you would still have to account for all your other components as mentioned above....

SPECIAL NOTES ON VIDEO CARDS:

This is where alot of people get stuck.....
there are 2 types of video cards

1) onboard which is usually shared with ram
2) seperate which is 1 you buy and have put in

ok you ask what is the difference.....

shared or onboard:
if you have 256megs of ram
and a 64meg video card
you will then have to minus 64 from 256 to get your actual ram amount
256-64=192 you now then have to minus the another 32megs for the driver file system
so you started with 256-64 = 192 then 192-32=160megs of ram
what does this mean? well what it means is that out of the 256 megs of ram you have in your computer your video card is chewing up 96megs of it and this is before you start using the actual operating system or any programs

Seperate video card:
ok this is better
this means that if you have 256 megs of ram then your Operating system has 256 megs of ram to use minus 32 for the vid card driver
so 256-32=224
and the video card has its own ram on it so all have lost is the 32 megs of ram.....note the bigger the video card the more ram used

example I have 1gig ram and 256meg video card
the video card driver actually uses 64megs of my ram so
1000-64=936megs of ram
the video card has 256megs of ram on it own to actually make all the lovely pictures/videos/gaming graphics do what it needs to...