Well, if you have that laptop just lying around otherwise, why not. I have a similar situation at my in-laws. They have an ink printer that needs cleaning periodically, which is triggered via software. I know how to do that from a built-in Windows app, so I have no idea hope to use Wine for that. That laptop has been lying around mostly unused, so not a big deal. Just grab it, wait till it boots, could take five minutes.

But I thought of first installing Linux on that laptop, so it would be useful. And then, I could clean the printer heads from any laptop I have, which is much more useful too. I keep Windows around only because of that.

Your use-case seems different, yet I thought we have some similarities here. I haven’t tried the VM way yet. But I just hope a lot it would solve my problem.