Im not exactly sure what you are asking. But I can tell you some of what we do with virtualisation. We use it a lot, and are using it more and more. You can make an XP virtual machine on your MacBook. You can then transfer any files you have to it. We use VMWare Fusion for virtualisation. In terms of applications, you will have to reinstall them on your virtual machine. But it really is just like using an XP machine, but it is within a window on the Mac (although VMWare has a nice full screen mode as well). I suspect that if you have the Dell in a situation where you could clone it, that clone could be on the XP virtual machine on your MacBook. I dont know about running it on an external drive, I havent tried that.