in my experience, when I ask students to use a VM, I find out that (a) their HDs are already full of crap (music movies, crapware) and/or (b) the bare metal is

in my experience, when I ask students to use a VM, I find out that (a) their HDs are already full of crap (music movies, crapware) and/or (b) the bare metal is not fast enough, or not enough RAM, to run a VM well. There is a certain appeal to forcing them to have a dedicated physical machine.