hey no problem!

dual boot is cool but the VMware i find is so much more useful. depends i guess on your hardware though to. on my windows box i have a the following specs:
AMD X2 5200+ 2.6GHz 2MB cache
2GB DDR2 Mushkin RAM CLS 3.3.3.12
ATI Saphire X1950XT 512 GDDR3
2x 320GB Sata Hard Drives running RAID 0 (striping - no redundancy, external NAS for that)
2x DVD's writers (why I don't know)
Creative Audigy 2ZS Platinum
Logitech Z-5500 5.1 Surround Sound (1000 watts - 500 RMS)
Logitech Orbit Cam
Logitech Media Elite Keyboard and G7 Gaming Mouse
2x 19 inch Samsun 910T LCD screens
Windows XP Pro SP2
(pretty descent system but nothing to crazy)

Now on this machine I can run VMware Server (free edition 1.03) and I have a VM set up for Fedora Core 7, my backup server which runs Fedora Core 6 with Plesk Hosting Control Panel and also have another VM for playing around with. Each VM runs from 10GB to 40GB. I don't have any performance issues unless the Linux VM Machines are doing updates, even then I don't notice it on my host just inside the actual VM. So yeah when I am on my windows box i just start the FC7 VM and use it if i want.... probably doesn't make sense to you but i like scripting better in Linux as well i work with some web servers and what not.

Good luck with getting it up and running. Oh and you could probably download the Windows you need via Torrent before your friend can get you the restore disk, depending on your internet!