When your soft ware application can not performance or install on your OS( such as Windows xp Pro x64 or Windows 7 or some other new and unfamiliar operating sysem ),may you’ll consider dual booting.Of course ,this is not a bad choice.
Yes ,you can have dual operating systems,but you can’t run both at once.you must shut down everyting you are doing .Start the slow, annoying ,painful process to reboot into the second OS. Much more to your annoyance,you had to re-install all applications .Some day,you find one of two operating systems useless or you want to install a new or better functional Operating System.So,you want to remove that from your C:drive and you are afraid that it will cause nuisance to your computer or the operating system.
Maybe ,you will step back!!!
If you use the virtual machines ,maybe everything will go easy!!
For example ,your OS is Windows xp 16-bit version or 32 bit -version,you can
run the Windows XP Professional x64 Edition into a virtual machine .So,you can run one of them you need ,without shutting down any work you are doing.You can choose the operating system to run your application.
the favorite is running a virtual machine on your computer is essentially the same as running a full second computer.
But for more normal workloads, I find the performance quite acceptable
But ,the VM can’t answer all things.
The Virtual machine does not support FireWire and USB 2.0 while you need to have USB support in your VM enviornment.Also,A VM will have an influence on your guest and host machines.Obiviously,if you guest machine are running a game ,your host machine can’t perform well.
Maybe ,both of the VM and dual booting have their advantages .
Maybe,We can share your better ideas.