Rfinnery, here we go again, mate a dual OS setup done by someone that knows what they are doing can come in very handy, eg- some pc users are crippled if their one and only operating system goes a muck, it may only need a driver to get going again but seeing they have not got another OS they can't use the net to get one downloaded, so they are in trouble, on the other hand with a dual setup it enables the user to switch over to their other OS which is normaly running perfectly and they can download a driver or go to Microsoft for help or whatever they have to do to get it running again, it gives the user the opportunity to get themselves out of trouble, without the hassles of going without their computors until a pc tech can fix it for them, of course a hardware problem is a different story.

So mate, i can't see how it is needless complexity that is anti-productivity, if you have not got a pc to use, thats when its in a anti-productivity state.
I have never had any file corruption because of having a duel OS either, i can only see that happening if the user caused it themselves, by moving unscaned files from one partition to the other.
Having a duel boot using either Linux or another Windows OS would create the same amount of maintenance on the disc anyway, which is no big hassle.

My idea of having a dual boot was that if Vista was coming with the deal why not have it installed anyway, its not going to harm any other OS on the same drive, saves a bit money down the road if wanting to upgrade later on, it will probably take quite a while before Microsoft will have the bugs out of Vista, therefore having a proven OS like XP or win2k to fall back on would come in very handy as a backup.

I have been doing some reading about Vista today as i didn't know much about it than it is a memory hog, which i do now agree that another one gig of ram would come in very handy as running Vista needs 1 gig itself, so to run any other programs the extra memory would be good idea.
What i did read today was that XP & Vista will live happily side by side if another small primary partition is setup initially, because Vista like to be setup in a primary partition.
Computors, aren't they fun

all the best
Brian