Phoenix OS is an Android-based operating system that you can install on your hard drive or as a bootable DVD or thumb drive. Also available as aa executable here.

During installation, you are given the option of your hard drive or to a USB thumb drive. It is best for performance to install it to your hard disk. There are also options to report a problem if you got an error message already and a FAQ if you have any questions before you begin. Next, you choose the drive to install Phoenix OS on, and they let you know that it won't delete any files. You can opt to use 4, 8, 16, or 32GB of drive space but make note you can't change this later so go big. If you're upgrading later, you will see the same screens we just discussed except for upgrade, rather than install. Finally, you can reboot and select Phoenix OS on boot. We've taken screenshots of all this you can see below as we know it can be a little intimidating for some.

Because PhoenixOS boots separately from Windows, you will find it to be much faster than other emulators you've tried. Obviously, this is a catch-22, because you can't get back to Windows without rebooting but it's well worth it for the performance.

Sorry AMD users, Phoenix OS does require an Intel processor. We had problems getting Phoenix POs to run in a virtual machine and hope they can fix this. Thumb drives are traditionally slow, and virtual machines are the best way to test something like this without any hassles.