Parallels vs. Boot Camp question

I was wondering if anyone can give me advice on which is better between Parallels and Boot Camp. Which crashes less, has less conflicts, problems, etc. The toggle limitations of Boot Camp are not important. I just want to know which program is safer and more stable.

Also, do I need Service Pack 2 for Windows XP on Parallels as with Boot Camp?

 

Boot Camp runs XP natively and not under virtulization, so it will by its very nature be moe stable. However, a virtual machine offers a lot of advantages over a Boot Camp partition including much easier backups, the ability to share files between the two systems easily, and of course the fact you can run Windows programs on the fly instead of shutting down OS X and booting Boot Camp.

Yes, for Boot Camp you will need an XP SP2 boot CD (or Vista). Boot Camp requires this and as far as I know there is no way around the limitation.