Have Your Mac and Windows XP, Too

Good news for Microsoft: It's just gained access to a new base of customers who need to pick up their own copy of Windows XP.

Bad news for Apple: A Mac can now get any of the viruses, worms and spyware that afflict Windows machines.

Terrific news for indecisive computer shoppers: They no longer have to choose between getting a Mac or a Windows machine, because an Intel-based Mac can be both.

All these developments come courtesy of a new, free program Apple released yesterday. Boot Camp makes what was once impossible, then mind-numbingly difficult, easy: You can put a copy of Windows XP on a Mac, then choose to run either XP or Apple's Mac OS X at each start-up.

This isn't like running a copy of Windows inside emulation software such as Microsoft's Virtual PC; XP runs as fast as if it were on a "real" PC, thanks to the Intel processors inside Apple's Mac mini, iMac and MacBook Pro.

It's also unlike the tricky, home-brewed software released last month that first allowed a side-by-side XP and OS X setup: Because Apple has also provided a set of drivers for almost all of a Mac's hardware, XP should be able to run just about any program it could handle on a machine from Dell, Gateway or HP. And yes, that includes all the viruses, worms, spyware and Trojan horses you'd otherwise never see on a Mac.

I spent many late nights trying to set up XP using the software and directions at the earlier site ( http://www.onmac.net ), with a near-total lack of success. But I had XP installing on a 20-inch iMac within maybe 15 minutes of downloading Boot Camp ( http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/ ).

Apple does note that this software, an 83-megabyte download, remains in a beta-test state and outright warns against using it "in a commercial operating environment or with important data." But if you can handle installing software on a Mac in the first place -- much less installing Windows XP itself -- you should be able to manage.

The first step was to download and install Apple's latest operating system patch, 10.4.6, and a firmware update to the boot-up software on the test Mac, an Intel-based iMac.

Then I loaded and ran the Boot Camp software, which put a set of Windows drivers on a blank CD and split the iMac's hard drive into Windows and Mac portions -- without requiring me to erase the drive first. I then selected how much drive space to make available to Windows and waited a couple of minutes for the job to complete.

But when I rebooted, the fun ended -- installing Windows XP is just as tedious on a Mac as on a PC. That copy of Windows needs to be a full -- not upgrade -- version that includes the Service Pack 2 update.

Once you've trudged through the XP setup and are staring at the familiar Windows desktop, pop in the driver CD and it will install the necessary driver software for you.