[Olorin]

When I started grad school, I got a Mac laptop because all the research computers were either Unix boxes or Macs. When my old PC died, I was left with a stack of games that I couldn't play anymore.

When I had the funds to buy a new desktop, I opted for a MacMini with bootcamp. I could use VMWare to simulate the Windows machine, but I wanted to get full performance while playing games. It's working well so far.

Negs: Dual boot means having to reboot to access the other OS.
WinXP cannot see the MacOS partition (though I set up my drive so that the Mac can read/write to the XP drive).

Plusses: Full speed performance for gaming.
No risk of viruses crossing from XP to Mac as XP can't even see the Mac partition.

I've also disabled the internet connection entirely on XP. I used it to download the updates when I first installed, then turned it off. Sometimes it's annoying when I want to check the 'net while booted into XP, but I almost always have my laptop at home too. If I want to download patches or mods for games, I do that on the Mac and drop the files into the XP partition. The positive is that I've never had a Windows install running so smoothly (no AV needed, and no spyware slowing down the system).