Same here - I run WinXP on parallels.
You say you are 'new' to mac - in that case have you got Leopard as your OS? If so, you have bootcamp which allows you to boot up in either macOS or windows. I prefer parallels as you can have them both running at the same time and swap stuff from one to the other. You can use parallels with leopard/bootcamp in which case you can boot up into, or run from parallels, the same windows installation - best of both worlds I guess. Either way you will need to procure a copy of windows.