Virtual Strategy Magazine published a "how to" article that teaches people how to build an effective VMware Workstation virtual machine template.  A template virtual machine, unlike a stand alone virtual machine, is used to rapidly recreate that virtual machine into multiple other stand alone virtual machines.

This "how to" walks through the process by covering the following steps:

• Creating the first Virtual Machine
• Making changes to the configuration file relating to that Virtual Machine
• Installation of the operating system
• Installation of VMware Tools
• Patching the operating system
• Cleanup of the Virtual Machine’s hard drive
• Use of the Microsoft Sysprep Utility
• Additional cleanup of the Virtual Machine’s configuration
• Cleanup of the directory where the Virtual Machine’s files exist
• Creating an archive/zip file of the Virtual Machine
• Creating a Virtual Machine from the archive

Read the entire article, here.