The way I see it, I will only need the external Superdrive to install Boot Camp Windows. Everything else that I want to do I can achieve via .iso images/drive sharing. I'd much rather save the money for the external drive (and the space in my closit to store it, as the drive would only be used about once every year) and spend it on parallels desktop if it allowed me to install Windows to a boot camp partition. A virtual machine isn't good enough for some of the applications that I need to run. Is this a possibility?
Why do you need a CD since you can use an .iso image? As parallels desktop directly accesses your boot camp partition and supports the installation of operating systems through .iso images I don't see a reason why you shouldn't be able to install windows through parallels on the boot camp partition. Should be a very minor adaption, shouldn't it?
I don't know how 'minor' it would really be. Your description oversimplifies the matter as Parallels is running it's virtualized hardware, while BootCamp is running the real hardware, two hardware profiles. Sure, it's technically feasible, and this sort of thing is what enterprise tools are for.
