How many times have you reinstalled windows because of slowness, orphan registry keys and files?

How many times have you installed & uninstalled a software and then realized that uninstaller didnt do it job properly?

How many time have you configured a software on one computer and then needed to migrate it to another with the same settings?

Virtual machines are cool - but think a little different. How about if you can install an application in a "virtual layer" of file system and registry - no need to have whole seperate OS. If the application layer is activated, software is visible with all its settings - files, folders, registry, services, icons, shortcuts and more. You can use the software as you normally do. When you are done, you can deactivate the layer, and within a few seconds everything you saw before is gone - files, folders, registry, icons, shortcuts, ....

Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) is a commercial product that does that. I think their success is due to the free personal license that they opened to public probably around year ago. I found it on some deals website (probably fw or sd). Sometime ago they were bought by Symantec. SVS Personal edition is still free. And these guys are getting more organized by packaging free software as virtual layers archives - similar to vmware appliances. You can simply import these archives and you get a running application in minutes - no need to install the software.

Other benefits that I ll just give hints include software hiding from corporate inventory apps, impressing peers & cool factor.

Check it out:
http://www.svsdownloads.com