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#11
It's a "Just in Case" measure. Either method has risks to it. With a Dual boot you are editing the boot manager, if something goes wrong then it could potentially leave both OS'es unbootable, so you need a recovery disk to get it working again.
Also, occasionally a OEM recovery partition won't boot after installing a different OS, so it's necesssary to have the disks.
Likewise, XP Mode is a Windows Update, again with the possibility of something going wrong and needing a recovery disk.
You should have recovery disks anyway... computer problems aren't known for waiting until you have recovery options.
What I meant is, it seems like an awful lot of effort to dual boot for your printer. I get that you want to save money, which is fine, but XP Mode will probably do what you want it to. Personally, I dual boot Linux and Windows, and it annoys me like nothing else, when I have to boot into Windows to use one program, and then boot back into Linux again.