What type of Host Machine should I get?

[Tomahawk Discounts]

Hi, first of all id like to thank anyone who reads this and takes the time to help me!

What im looking to do is convert the computers I have now that run a program on them 24 hours a day to virtual machines.

The program runs on windows xp(Guest machine if it were to be virtualized I take it)

What my question is... I have about 8 computers now that are running, I have toss a few vitual machines on my windows 7 laptop but have come to find that if i run 3 or more virtual machines, the desktop lags very very bad.

What computer requeirments would I need to run 10 - 20 virtual machines.

I would prefer the Host Machine be Windows 7 but if there is something better, i would def use that.

The host computer would only be used for the virtual machines and no other programs would be running or downloaded on it.

Once again, thank you for reading this and any suggestions would be great as I am very limited on computer knowlege.

[mpack]

You need to pay attention to how much memory is present in the host PC, and the CPU type. In an ideal world each XP guest would have one real CPU core all to itself, and 512MB RAM also all to itself, and lets say 3GB disk space - more if each VM is running an app that needs more. You always have to leave one core and a certain amount of RAM for the host as well - lets say 1GB RAM, 20GB disk space.

So, to run 20 XP VMs on one host PC, and the XPs will be running apps that use CPU but not much disk space then you would need a CPU with 21 cores, 11GB of RAM, 80GB disk space.

If each VM could run multiple instances of the app in question then that would help considerably. But, you don't give any clues as to the nature of the guest app.