You've gotta love virtualization for providing a "have cake and eat it too" solution. I personally prefer VMware Workstation.
On your hardware run the OS that makes the most sense for your needs, AND run all the others for evaluation, testing, learning to tweak, keeping up with tech, etc. in virtual machines.
Networking can be used to easily transfer data - and possibly best of all - you can make snapshots and within seconds revert a system that's been hosed back to a known state.
-Noel