I've noticed that virtual machines inherit much of the hardware configuration of the host machine.
I'd say your not totally on target with that statement and generally speaking with the exception of directly connecting certain hardware peripherals/resources the only Host hardware that the normal file based Virtual Machine is going to see for it's actual Make/Model/Manufacture is the CPU and under certain configurations the CD/DVD other then that have a look at the Virtual Machine Specifications in the documentation.
My question is, can a virtual machine be configured so that all of its hardware is based on generic hardware, such as a generic CPU, generic video, audio, etc.
I want to create a VM that can be taken from one type of hardware to another without all the plug and play discovery and drivers changing if possible...
Not installing VMware Tools will keep things a generic as possible however even installing them the normal file based Virtual Machine will still conform to the Virtual Machine Specifications as previously mentioned along the the qualifying caveats.
So the bottom line is the Virtual Machine is always going to detect the actual Make/Model/Manufacture of the CPU as you move it from one Physical Machine to another but the base virtual hardware should remain the same.
