For those of you that might not have encountered it, VMplayer is runs
guest operating systems on a Linux or Windows host - see
http://www.vmware.com/products/player/ .  This is a similar offering
to VirtualBox, from Sun.

Recent incarnations allow, in addition to prebuilt "appliances", a
listed of operating systems  that can be installed from the
distribution DVD; including Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  Fully expecting
to be rebuffed, banged in the Scientific Linux DVD, told VMplayer that
it was RHEL and a short while later it was installed with no sweat.
This is the 64bit version but it runs perfectly happily on an i686.  I
suspect that the 32 bit version would run somewhat faster but this is
quite acceptable. It performs well enough that I have built gcc &
gfortran 4.5.0 in less than an hour.

The advantage over dual boot is that you can switch between the two
OS's with a couple of clicks.  The connecting to the USB ports or
other peripherals is no problem and access to the internet is
automatic - wired or wireless.  Getting the scree size right is the
only slightly fiddly bit;  you have to play off the virtual machine
screen size, against that set in RHEL (under system=>preferences)
until you do not overfill the Windows screen whilst adequately
filling, or slightly overfilling, the linux screen. It is not rocket
science but takes a few minutes to get right.

For reference, my host system is Windows 7 and the Scientific Linux is
version 5.2.

For those that have no choice in the matter, this is a very convenient
way of having SL on a Windows desktop.

Paul Thomas