there are better options than parallels

so unless I wanted to haul two laptops around this was a better option.

For me, the expense of this software is worth the amount of time is saves me…there are free options, but the benefit of the Virtual Machines over Boot Camp is that it will allow you to run Windows as an additional program (without restarting your computer) and keep OS X running the entire time

It's by far the best of the virtualization options available for the Mac.