Installing XP Os on a Vista laptop

I'm thinking of installing XP in ADDITION to Vista on my laptop. I understand there are two ways to do it:

1. Have both OS installed on harddrive and

2. Use a product like virtualpc, which I hear is free.

The downside of No. 1, I hear, is that once XP is installed, it takes a long time to switch from one OS to the other.

The downside of No. 2, I hear, is that you have to have Vista Professional, which I don't have. I have Vista Home.

What do you recommend? Thank you kindly.

 

First let me say that I've never tried this, but I have read a bit about it.
Your first option creates a problem for a machine that already has Vista installed.
Everything that I've heard is that XP MUST be installed first before you can add a seperate installation of Vista on a second partition
Your second choice however sounds promising.
I just read the Microsoft web site about virtualpc
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx
It would appear that this is exactly what you are after as long as you have the memory and HDD capacity to run both OSes.


Guest Operating System / Minimum Memory / Minimum Hard-Disk Space

Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition / 64 MB / 500 MB

Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me) / 96 MB / 2 GB

Windows 2000 Professional / 96 MB / 2 GB

Windows XP Home Edition / 128 MB / 2 GB

Windows XP Professional / 128 MB / 2 GB

Windows Vista Enterprise / 512 MB / 15 GB

Windows Vista Business / 512 MB / 15 GB

Windows Vista Ultimate / 512 MB / 15 GB

And yes, it is free.