Huh?? Are you kidding?

1) You don't need a very high end graphic card nor RAM nor processor. And what does cooling has to do with VISTA?? This is not O/C!!!!
For VISTA, 1GB is sufficient.(But 2 GB is recommended..heck..even 2GB for XP is recommended...RAM so cheap). My old Athlon XP can run VISTA with 768MB and Aero Interface with a 6200 and my laptop with integrated 6100 Geforce Go also can run Aero Interface. All you need is a DX9 card, nothing special.

2) It is NOT going to kill your system.

TS: You don't actually need a separate HDD for VISTA, same HDD with separate partition will do. And i don't think multi O/S in a PC will have any effect on performance becoz only one is active any one time. I've 4 OS in my PC....XP, VISTA, MAC OSX, UBUNTU..no problem at all.

Basically:
1) Partition your hard disk.(if needed)
2) Install XP on partition 1/hdd 1.
3) Install VISTA on partition 2/hdd 2.

Done.

VISTA will automatically detect your XP OS and present a menu to boot from each OS..


I totally agree AND this is the i'm using FOR my Computer.