I also find dual boot painful. On my old machine I switched main OS several times (back and forth from Windows to Linux). I couldn't dual-boot because it just wouldn't be fun. There's no real way to share data properly between the two OSes, I wouldn't have the exact same set of available apps, etc.
Now I have a MacBook with OS X. It combines the things I want from Windows and Linux, so I have no need to change OS. If I really need Linux or Windows for something, hardware virtualisation makes things easy.
That helps but invariably you want to use both OS's at the same time. It sucks to have to reboot every time you want to shift data about. Much easier to have both machines running at the same time. VM's also have tools for the guest to share clipboards.
Now I have a MacBook with OS X. It combines the things I want from Windows and Linux, so I have no need to change OS. If I really need Linux or Windows for something, hardware virtualisation makes things easy.