On a new laptop with Vista Business, there is a need for XP Pro to run certain corporate applications. The HD has plenty of space to carve out a separate partition, and XP drivers are available for everything on the laptop, so we're OK there.

Installing Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 or Parallels (I noticed on Slickdeals it's now available free) would be simpler - no need to modify the Vista bootloader or risk serious corruption.

OTOH, this is a new laptop with nothing really saved on it, and both a recovery partition with HD image on it and a Vista DVD. And it might be fun to play.

So are there reasons I might prefer virtualization over dual-boot or vice versa? Performance? Compatibility? Other issues I'm not currently aware of?


Edited to add:
A minor question: also purchased was a Norton AV 2009 for up to 3 computers. Does anybody know if installation of the program on a second partition of the same computer would use a second of the NAV licenses? Couldn't find an answer on Symantec's website.