If your VM supports real USB devices, you can install to a USB stick using the InstallAROS tool on the desktop. Then boot your laptop from the stick.
Is this possible with VMware?
I tried doing this in VirtualBox/Win7 yesterday, using the raw device access .vmdk generator to access my USB stick. But the installer failed to do any formatting or writing (DMA error, I think). However, HDToolBox seemingly managed to write a SFS partition table. Maybe I should try VMware instead?
