Dual booting with windows first time user

Guys

i have never dual booted before so i come with some questions.

i have used OSX for about 2 years now and love every minute of it (though Lion has stretched the friendship) and i have found that i need windows now and then. Up until now i have had a windows box but i have since moved it on as i thought my windows needs were finished with.

Q1 If i use bootcamp do i have to choose wich partition to use or will it auto boot into OSX? much prefer straight boot into osx instead of making key strokes.

Q2 what prep work do i need to do so i can get the ball rolling ie partitions and best programs to use.

Q3 If i decide to go with VMware or Parallels do i still need a partition and the usual to go with it ie how much and best programs.

Q4 If i use a virtual machine can i use my hardware still ie burner and sound card.

The main reason i need windows is i need to do disc backups of our accounting software at work so if i can transfer the backups before i leave for the afternoon i can finish the backup to disc at home and safe them offsite but i need to be able to do it in a windows enviroment.

Many Thanks

DP

It sounds like your Windows needs are minimal. I would not bother with Boot Camp and the trouble of setting up a dual boot.

Use virtual software which will run Windows in a virtual session. No partitioning required. I recommend VMWare Fusion over Parallels since it's more stable and has much better support. However, Oracle has free VM software you can download instead. For your needs, it should be fine. It's called VirtualBox and can be downloaded from here.

It will run IE and your burner software just fine.

i agree, VitualBox will do perfectly fine. I used to run Windows 7 on Bootcamp full time as i just bought my mac book and really didnt know/like mac. Then when i played around with mac os x, i liked it. And decided to del the win7 portion. And now im running it occasionally on VirtualBox and it works just fine.