Vista - Opinion wanted: Dual boot or VPC

Running the following system:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3 GHz)
4 GB RAM
500GB and 1.5TB hard drives
Vista Home Premium 64-bit

Quite happy with the OS...except for the fact that MS touted it as for
the "multimedia professional". Unfortunately, two of the more
important applications I want to run are the image
editing/manipulation software for the Canon XTi camera, and the video
editing software (ImageMixer) for a Canon digital camcorder. Neither
software is (or will ever) be available in a 64-bit flavour. These
are the only things I need that won't run on the Vista 64-bit OS.

So, I'm faced with a couple of choices.

Run dual boot Vista and XP, and run all the Canon software on the XP
side. Or...

Run the Canon software on an XP virtual machine.

I'm quite happy to work through the details of how to implement either
solution, but I'm looking for input as to which would be the wiser
choice, considering stuff like processor optimization, memory
utilization, and whether the video card gets used in either scenario.
Or any other consideration I've missed.

Or, if anyone has an option I haven't thought of, I'm all ears.

Thanks.

"SirCumferenceTheFlatulent" <sircumferencetheflatulent@xxxxxx> wrote in
message news:i50pq4hadg3761j8v1l55o7g2h9ha2kqhf@xxxxxx
Almost certainly, the fact that VPC doesn't support USB devices, other than
those which can be emulated or accessed via network redirection.

If your Canon device connects via USB, I can pretty much guarantee that it
won't work with VPC...

Other virtualisation products e.g. VMWare support USB fully...


--
Mark Rae
ASP.NET MVP
http://www.markrae.net

OR - do what I did, put the OS drive in a hard drive caddy.
I run XP Pro 64 bit because I use large Excel spreadsheets
with sizeable macros using a s/h Intel Extreme processor
off eBay and 4GB Crucial.
For 32 bit XP Pro. I just slip in the 32 bit drive when I need
it, several apps only install on a 32 bit platform
Which gives the benefit of the processor and RAM
for both 64 and 32 bit.
And I could add a Linux drive caddy.
Whether going for dual boot or VM ware backup first.
Tried a dual boot install, it went pear shaped, lost
everything. Bought True Image, and a 1TB eSATA
backup drive. And tested the restore. True Image
in differential mode lets you roll back to any prior
backup date, even to the original clean install of the OS.