Which emulators should I try? I have a couple of AMD 5350 test machines, how much RAM will I need? (I have plenty of DDR-3 1600 MHz lying around the house, and hardware that uses it.)

I do have experience with Crossover, it works well with Office 97 and 2003, I should probably install it immediately.

Also, I have a KVM switch. On the "other side" of the KVM I have an old i3-3245 system with Mythbuntu 12.10 (I used it to watch television with the HDHomeRun Dual back in the day). I never use it anymore, maybe I should scrap that machine. Maybe my "main"...

If I install Win7 in VirtualBox or KVM, will Windows be tied to that exact hardware? Can I take the VM and move it to another machine at some point without having to re-activate Win7?

I bought a replacement board identical to the one Win7 is licensed on. But of course it failed. I have two more identical boards in my basement. Running out of acceptable hardware will not happen for quite a few years, hopefully.

But I am looking forward to that day when I cannot find any hardware, and I have to use emulation. Does anyone have experience with this?

I still have my 5.25" and 3.5" drives. My first computer was a 386 DX-40 with 4 Megs of RAM. Later, I increased RAM and added the 387 math coprocessor.

Am I the only one here who remembers the Windows 3.1 error where all colors would become inverse (green would become violet, etc)? And am I the only one who remembers the Windows 3.1 "0xDEADBEEF" error?

I envied Apple users. They paid a lot more money for their computer, and a lot more for their printers IIRC. But part of that was the royalty for PostScript. So they could produce fine manuscripts...