The latest Beta build announced by Parallels Desktop can not only read/write BootCamp partitions, but can boot from one!

* Boot from BootCamp partition. Another long awaited feature that lets you boot your 32-bit Windows XP residing on Boot Camp partition directly in Parallels Desktop for Mac.

While currently limited to Windows 2000/XP/2003 on NTFS partitions, and apparently rather buggy in it’s current incarnation, this will make maintaining a Windows environment on an Intel Mac much simpler and consolidate used hard drive space. If extra performance/USB 2.0 support/3D acceleration is needed one can just reboot to BootCamp while not having to maintain, update, and secure a secondary environment for use in Parallels.

Note that BootCamp is technically in Beta until the release of OS X 10.5 (Leopard). This Beta build of Parallels should definately not be in used in a production environment, but it is a very welcoming sign of things to come.