VM Ware / Boot Camp

So I've been playing around with some macs where I work and I'm almost in love with them. However, since I'm studing Computer Engineering some of the classes I will be taking will require the use of a Windows OS. So my question is if I run VM Ware or do a dual boot will something like XP or Vista run native? I'm worried about compiling problems or other related issues.

either option would work. **as long as it's an intel mac. all new macs being sold have intel processors** with vmware you can set it up to share files between the Mac OS and virtual Windows so that you're not limited there. when i was working as an OIT student tech, i setup a couple macs for some people in graphics to do just that. they required the windows for 2 old programs that didn't have a mac version.