It is also important for doing processor intensive tasks, which is important if you NVivo database gets to be quite large. This is important if you deal with resource intensive content, such as high quality video or audio. The native method (Bootcamp) allows all resources on the machine to be dedicated to doing nothing but running Windows and its software, such as NVivo. I found that recent versions of Parallels will actually import a virtual machine from the Bootcamp installation of Windows, and actually allow you to run Windows either way - natively through Bootcamp or virtually through Parallels. However, I recently purchased Parallels Desktop (for Mac OS X - I run 10.6, 'Snow Leopard'), so that I could access all of my NVivo content while working in Mac OS X. Until recently, I have been running NVivo 8 through a Bootcamp (native) installation of Windows XP.
