Need some dual-boot advice.

I currently have xp home installed on my vostro laptop -2.5gb ram-1.6ghz duo - 120gb hd.
My school offers a free version of vista business for single use. I don't really want to abandon xp, so I was thinking of dual-booting vista and xp.
I found a nice guide on the apcmag.com website about doing this, but I have a few questions...
1. If I separate the hd into 2 partitions, 60/60, will it be big enough for both os's, or should I partition differently?
2. Will I notice a performance decrease due to having 2 os's on one hd?
3. Are there any other problems I might run into?
4. Is this entire idea just stupid and should I just forget about vista altogether?

Thank you for any and all advice.

Oh, yeah I guess some space will have to be saved for the dell recovery and mediadirect partitions...

 

1. Maybe you should think about 40/80 instead, since Vista OS takes up a lot more space. Better yet, you can also consider 20/40/60 where the 60 is for storage, or 25/45/50 if you have a lot of apps to install.

2. No.

3. No.

4. Not at all.

 

1. Allocate 40GB for XP and 60GB for Vista.

2. On the first partition of the HDD, install Vista. On the 2nd one, install XP. The OS installed on the first partition of the HDD, will be on the outer edge of the HDD, and R/W rates and access times will be better when working in the OS that is on the outer-edge of the disk.
(It depends which OS you'll be using most)

3. Not really -> If you have already have partitions created, install XP first, on the 2nd partition, and then Vista on the 1st partition. When you install Vista last, it should take control of the boot-loader, and give you an option to load into XP as well (when booting).

4. I think its stupid (well, not that stupid). The day I installed Vista 64, I never logged back into XP. I just have it installed there, in case I run into any problems with Vista, and I'm unable to log into it !!

 

Another tip is, make both OS use the same pagefile, this way you won't waste a few GBs for duplicated pagefile. The pagefile is just like a scratchboard, there is no problem at all for XP/Vista using the same pagefile.sys file.

 

Hmmm... When I tried to do that the OS warned me that pagefile.sys already existed and to choose another HD.

 

You don't have to choose another HDD, it's not mandatory. Boot into the first OS and set the pagefile and the size, then boot into the second OS and set it at the same location and size. It will give you a warning about a pagefile already existed, then just select overwrite it. I've dual-boot Vista/XP and both OS share the same pagefile.sys file.

 

It all works. I shrunk the xp partition, installed vista, and all is good. Even mediadirect works in both os's. Thanks for the page file advice too. I was a little concerned by the size of vista, but after sharing the page file and deleting some 3gb hibernation file thing, I got vista down to less than 10gb.
Thanks again all.