Patent ID: 7506265

Claim:
A single computer system for running one or more software applications comprising: a processor; a computer readable storage medium including instructions executable by the processor, the computer readable storage medium comprising: instructions for a host operating system suitable for displaying a graphical user interface; instructions for multiple guest operating systems configured to execute on the single computer system in virtual machines emulated by one or more emulator programs running on the host operating system; and wherein the host operating system is configured to display a reduced-size continually updated representation of the video output of at least one operating system from the multiple guest operating systems that are being operated in a background mode; wherein the multiple guest operating systems that operate in a background mode are active; wherein video output of the multiple guest operating systems is stored in one or more virtual video memory components; wherein the reduced-size continually updating representation of the video output from at least one guest operating system is represented as at least one thumbnail image, the at least one thumbnail image is generated from the video output stored in the video memory components, and the at least one thumbnail image is generated at predetermined intervals while software applications are active; and wherein the predetermined intervals are such that the at least one thumbnail image is a real-time representation of the video output from the active software applications.