I use macs at home and at work.

I recommend dual boot over using parallels, unless you are just doing small things or have a lot of memory. Parallels (and presumably vmware and virtual box, etc) can run windows inside your Mac OS, but it's hardly the same experience as running it booted up purely into windows.

Just so you know, I don't use any windows software except at work. I do dream of the day when DAZ will release their dynamic clothing plugin for mac, but otherwise, I can do everything I need without ever booting into windows. At work, I use it to compile dos programs, lol. But, I have used it for more sophisticated stuff...and thus highly recommend dual booting for anything other than the really little things.