Use -enable-kvm to leverage hardware acceleration.
Look into Supermium or K-Meleon to browse the modern web on an XP QCOW2 instance. windows xp qcow2
You can secure the virtual disk image at the block level. Step 1: Creating the QCOW2 Image Use -enable-kvm to leverage hardware acceleration
Use -net nic,model=rtl8139 -net user for the most compatible "out of the box" internet access. windows xp qcow2
A 40GB virtual disk only takes up as much space as the actual files inside it.