I have to run Windows of some sort to take voting databases (Diebold so far) apart. It's basically an MS-Access application.
But I'm not crazy enough to actually boot Windows, or for that matter connect it to the 'net.
I have a very basic single-core Celeron laptop with 1.5gig RAM.
I run Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn Linux, tuned to the max, with Innotek's VirtualBox software creating a "Virtual Machine". I assign anywhere between 512megs and a gig to the VM and boot WinXP in it. Runs great. I cut off all Internet/Ethernet/WiFi access to the VM, giving it access to the host Linux OS disk structure as a "network drive". I can thus feed the VM anything it needs without giving it Internet access.
Web, EMail, word processing and similar general work happens in Linux.
THAT is how you safely run XP or any other Windows variant. Otherwise you're just a prey species in the jungle.
I got nuked a year ago despite every possible update and a paid/updated copy of ZoneAlarm Pro. Haven't booted Windows since. No regrets
. No crashes or glitches either, except for when I was experimenting with alpha code after doing a full backup
. Even then, the /home/jim directory holds every possible setting so with a new Linux loaded and that reloaded, I'm immediately back to normal. No registry to mess with. God I love it
.