I use a small console-only install of VirtualBox and use Samba to communicate back with Windows. I think I only have it using 1 cpu and 256 MB memory. I can eas

I use a small console-only install of VirtualBox and use Samba to communicate back with Windows. I think I only have it using 1 cpu and 256 MB memory. I can easily run Autocad or Solidworks in the foreground. I find that I only lose about 5% efficiency compared to booting up Linux and copying without overhead.