I come from a Linux background and what I am used to doing with my development projects is setting up a template PC on a virtual machine so one of my projects won't effect the other.
Linux of course allows you to install as many copies of whatever software you use as needed. Microsoft on the other hand requires that you pay them a licensing fee for every computer that you have a single installation installed on.
I am rather annoyed by this, and it is precisely what keeps me from doing development using their development stack (which I'd really like to learn by the way, but they are making it difficult for me to do so). While I understand that for learning purposes the free versions of their development software are usually enough, the way they handle the OS licensing is what is keeping me from learning their stack.
Even though I legally own a copy of Windows 7, I can't install another copy of it on my Virtual Machine without the OS shutting down after 60 days. To do so I either have to get an illegal copy (which I don't want to do) or I have to buy another copy of Windows 7, which isn't practical either since I don't want my projects interfering with one another (which is the whole reason I'm using a virtual machine in the first place! To offer a plain vanilla environment to ensure that nothing non-standard is interfering with the way I am writing the documentation to a project)
Seeing as neither of these options is ideal, is there some other way that I can do this?
(That isn't illegal, and doesn't require me to buy another license for each instance of a product that I install on a virtual machine)
P.S. I'm not sure if this is a Stack Overflow question or a Super User question, so feel free to move it if I'm asking this at the wrong site.
-Thanks!