Apple OKs Intel-Macs to run Windows XP

[Kablooie]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/ptech/04/05/apple.software.ap/index.html

CUPERTINO, California (AP) -- Apple Computer Inc. on Wednesday unveiled new software that allows Intel-based Macs to run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP software.

The computer maker said its new "Boot Camp" software is available as a download beginning Wednesday. It allows users with a Microsoft Windows XP installation disc to install Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac computer.
...
It also lets users choose to use either Mac OS X software, or the Windows software when they restart their computer.

Users can download the new Boot Camp software from Apple's Web site. A final version of Boot Camp will be available as a feature in the upcoming Mac OS X version 10.5 "Leopard."

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Now, I wish I could run a real OS on my non-Apple intel box

[guruoo]

8. Here....

http://forum.osx86project.org/
http://64.233.179.104/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&langpair=de%7Cen&u=http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/German_FAQ&prev=/language_tools
HP:

Thinkpad:


AMD homebrew:

[confludemocrat]

2. That is subversive as hell-I love it!

IP people in orgs can't argue against Macs now that they can run both (and Linux), and which OS do you think they will find themselves preferring?

[endarkenment]

3. Oh but they have to buy the overpriced Apple hardware first.

Let me know when Apple allows their OS to run legally on off the shelf PCs.

[suston96]

4. Overpriced?

You gotta be kidding!

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore/

Mac-Intels start at $599.00!

[THX1138]

7. Sorry

But the specs on the shoebox looking thing are weak. I could build something twice as fast for about $300 less.

[onehandle]

10. Good for you.

99% of other computer owners don't build their own PCs.

[THX1138]

14. Too bad

Steve Jobs doesn't give Mac users the option.

[Tesha]

21. I have better things to do than screw PCs together. (NT)

[NervousRex]

31. Good for you..

n/t

[NervousRex]

30. Nice try...

You'll never convince Mac cultists that they pay too much for proprietary hipster toys. Brand loyalty is very powerful. I, like you, build my own pc's...and have for years after being burned by Job's pricey toys 15 years ago. Let the suckers pay through the nose for a PC emulator machine with a neon plastic case....it's funny, really.

[alfredo]

36. I am willing to pay a bit more for something I know will work

as advertised day after day. This one has been in use constantly, 24/7, except during Thunderstorm season, for six years. I had one problem with one update, it changed permissions on me. A friend with a Mac laptop network booted me, repaired the permissions and i was up and running again. This was back in the early days of 10.0. It's been solid as a rock since then.

I have never heard of a Mac user getting so pissed at their computer that they threw it out a window (Packard Bell), or like another friend, smashed his Dell with a sledgehammer. You don't see Macs left out on the sidewalk at the end of the semester. They are not disposable computers.

Some computers might be spec'd out better at a given price point, but when I buy a Mac I know it is going to work well for many years to come. I will pay extra for that reliability.

[northzax]

44. not to mention that, frankly

the effort and time that would go into building my own box (learning about the components, finding them somewhere, putting them together, debugging them) I figure that's at least 25 hours of work, for someone who doesn't bother with this often. If I made minimum wage, then it might make rational sense, but I don't. I make about $40/hour (with benefits and all) so even if it takes me only ten additional hours, that's $400 difference. It's like hiring an accountant, or a lawyer. Sure, I could learn General Accounting Principles, but it's cheaper, and easier, in the long run to just pay someone who already knows it.

[alfredo]

46. I'd only build if I was making a Linux or UNIX machine. I wouldn't

waste my time on building something for Windows.

I have a Linux box, an old iMac, but it is out on loan right now.

[okieinpain]

58. it's not the os, it the software that the users put on the os. most users

go overboard on installing pretty screen savers, and cutesy mouse pointers. My brother for some stupid reason insists on install wordperfect, ms works, and ms office. then wonders why weird shit happens with his computer.

maybe he should try a mac, then he would be forced to use only one program.

[alfredo]

59. All he'd need is NeoOffice, Graphic Converter, Mac Janitor

and maybe Tex-Edit if he insists on another editor/word processor. Oh yeah, and MacSolitaire. http://www.pcv-soft.com/

And for his possible Tetris needs: Quinn http://versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17153&mode=feedback

[Tesha]

56. Some people like to buy Chevys. Some people like to buy Porsches.

Some people like to buy Chevys. Then, they go down to the
local auto parts place and buy a lot of stuff that they
screw on in the hopes of making their Chevy something
special. Fancy carbs or new ROMs for the Engine management
computer. Light-up gear knobs and fuzzy dice and little
hang-from-the-mirror evergreen tree air fresheners.

Other people like to buy Porsches. Then they drive the
Porsches around pretty much right as they came from
Zuffenhausen because, you know, right from the factory
those Porsches are pretty-sweet cars.

Somehow, even though some of those Porsches *MAY* cost more
than some of those Chevys, and even though Porsche definitely
sells far fewer Porsches than Chevy sells Chevys, Porsche is
still in business and its customers are still quite happy.
Chevy, on the other hand, seems to be going toes up.

Tesha

[Tesha]

15. Good for you. (NT)

[politicat]

24. But do you know the parts will work together?

Here's the thing: We've rolled our own for years and used pretty much every manufacturer out there. Every individual component is certified to run with Windows... but they're not and CAN'T be certified to work with each other because there are too many variables. So Windows would crash. When we'd go look at crash logs, it was almost always a conflict between the motherboard, the video card and/or the disk controller. We could patch and customize some of the code and develop workarounds, but when that video memory got overloaded, something always went down, and it was almost always because of a conflict. And we weren't using cheap, obscure stuff - we bought off the shelf AMD, Intel, Belkin, Western Digital etc. (The cheap, obscure stuff is a direct route to conflicts.)

When you buy a Mac, you're buying the guarantee that the components and their software will work together. A big reason that Macs don't crash nearly as often a Windows machines do is that the hardware does not have conflicts.

But is that worth the extra money? When you compare a high end Mac desktop to an equivalent high end Sony machine, the prices are within10% of each other. A topped out iMac runs about 1900. A topped ou Sony VA tower with a 20 in LCD screen starts at $1999. So right there, the Mac is less expensive (and runs faster).

When I still worked in the industry, I developed user manuals and interactive training programs. I primarily used InDesign for the former and Macromedia products for the latter. I had 2-3 crashes or restarts a day, taking 3-5 minutes each. So figure 10 minutes a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks out of the year. I made $30 an hour, so 1/6 of an hour a day equals $5 a day, $25 a week, or $1250 a year in lost productivity. (We won't even talk about the times that Windows managed to recover after a five or ten minute crunch and swap time, the time lost to updating and maintaining the medicine software, the never ending security patching...) Was it worth it to my company to spend an extra $150 on a Mac laptop instead of buying me a Toshiba laptop when my computer died? Absolutely. In recouped productivity, the Mac saved them $1100. Today, if I presented them with the option of an iMac or the Sony, they'd go with the iMac in a heartbeat.

So you might want to check your figures before you jump on that "Macs are expensive" bandwagon.

[Solon]

45. If you are going to build your own, get Linux, then it'll work...

a LOT easier than Windows, and is more stable. The choice is NOT Windows vs. Mac anymore, and they shouldn't be either.

[politicat]

53. *snort* Please don't...

This is not a flame -- really. This is my life. It's kinda funny, really. Or so I keep telling myself.

I live with a UNIX (note - UNIX, not Linux) devotee with a Master's of Comp Sci (and his doctorate, if he will just get around to writing the damned paper) and almost 20 years in the industry, including time with NASA, Sun, IBM and Bell Atlantic. I don't joke when I say that Assembly is his first language, C his second, Java his third, and English his fourth. (And he's American born.) If you have health insurance, he wrote a good deal of the underlying software that manages your records, and he wrote about half of the software that feeds NASA satellite data to be processed before it goes to NASA TV and the NASA website. He is also the only UNIX ecumenist I know personally. He'll use any flavor, and likes them all.

I know UNIX and Linux. Intimately. Too intimately. I should be getting child support from Linux, I know it so well. No, thank you. I'll take my nice BSD based Darwin OS X. I like not having to change operating systems once a week just so I can both use my wireless network AND print on the same day.

My partner has 5 machines in his office. He loves them enough to lavish Distros upon them. Many distros. Frequently. Both the Dell laptop and the Powerbook are currently dual booting; the former Ubantu and XP Pro; the latter 10.4 and Ubantu; they're doing okay apparently. At least, I haven't *heard* any requests for additional software or hardware. I guess I better check the credit card statements, though.

The other three hardware sets are: one later model PowerMac Beige G3 with upgraded memory and 3 SCSI hard drives; one Compaq Presario 1 GHz Intel chip with 512 RAM; and 1 ice iBook 500 MHz 684 MB. (I think he also has my spare ice iBook - my backup machine - but I'm not supposed to know that he sneaked it out of my office.... and it will have my 10.4 disk image replaced upon it when I oh so innocently ask about it.)

In the last six months, on the 3 different sets of hardware, we've had:
Ubantu (all three, and currently booting off of CDs or external drives)
Debian
Free BSD (all three; my partner loooorves BSD, especially when it doesn't work right and he has something to play with.)
NetBSD (all three, see above.)
Yellowdog (the macs.)
Mandrake (or is it Mandriva now?) (The Intel. Yikes.)
Slackware (All three, in succession.)
Gentoo (all three, PLUS on the handheld.)
Suse (the Intel.)
Darwin (minus the OS X overlay)
Solaris (the intel)
and probably at least three others that I never even noticed. One of them probably in Parsi with a Mandarin interface.

There's Linux of some flavor on every machine but the one I'm typing on right now, but I wouldn't want to do anything intensive on any of them. They're usually not running properly. If it's not the video drivers, it's the networking and if it's not the networking, it's the printer drivers and if it's not the printer drivers, it's unstable, or it's the firewire drives or the slave drives or once, memorably, the SCSI drives. I didn't know my husband knew some of those words, and we've been married almost five years.

Linux will get there... someday. Not yet, though. It needs money behind the projects, and there's no money in open source unless there's money to be made. Apple and Sun both realized this and did something about it, and their products are pretty damn good.

And it needs a lot less fragmentation. Having 30 flavors out there (and having Holy warriors for all 30, all of whom seem determined to KILL each other with the power of their minds through their flame posts) isn't helping anyone.

I'm not even going to touch MANpages....

[Solon]

54. Your husband sounds like a tinkerer...

Doesn't really matter what the OS is, he will probably mess something up on it, as for me, I tinker to an extent, but I'm no programmer, just a power user who has a SHITLOAD of experience with Windows, I made XP crash so many times it was unbelievable, but that's what tinkerers do. As far as Linux not doing any "intensive" work, how about graphic design, like, I don't know Shrek?

http://cgw.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=Archives&Subsection=Display&ARTICLE_ID=118664

That reminds me, what is the OS used on the fastest computers in the world again? Oh yeah, that would be Linux, again! I mean, look at what the Department of Energy uses:

http://www.top500.org/system/details/7747

The fastest supercomputer isn't alone either, look at how many of the top 500 run Linux right here:



That also reminds me, since you were talking about heavy lifting, look at Democratic Underground again, this time its Netcraft stats:

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.democraticunderground.com

And this website isn't alone, not by a long shot, somewhere around 60-70% of all Internet servers run some flavor of Linux. The rest are mostly Sun Solaris, Windows XP and Mac OSX.

You seem to think there is no money to be made in Linux, nor is it used by any major company, as my links prove, many of the BIG boys are getting involved in it, not to mention some governments, if you are concerned about security, here you go.

http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/

[politicat]

55. Yay. You're still not converting me.

Sorry, but it's not religious for me. It has uses - I admit that. Big iron does fine with *ux, as long as it has maintenance people to medicate it into submission upon install, and take care of the crankiness that comes up in running - and all machines have crankiness. Humans don't do well with 1s and 0s so there will always be bugs in the code.

I will never deny that, and I didn't. But I don't think *ux is yet useful for the home user. (I don't think XP is useful for the home user, either, but that's another thread.) And until there's money to be made in the home market, it won't. The money's slowly coming, but I wouldn't stake my mortgage on it.

I can't install *ux on an off-the-shelf box and hand it to my barely computer literate mother and expect her to survive the experience. (Again, for that matter, I don't think it can be done with XP, either, but another thread.)

I can hand her a shrink wrapped box with OS X. Can't do it with OS 9 or earlier and wouldn't subject anyone to that. I wouldn't curse anyone with 98 or 95. (3.1 wasn't hideous.)

Security... *shrug* no such thing. If it's got a communication port hooked to the outside world, someone can get into it. Only secure computer is one that's not on a network.

And yeah, he tinkers. I'm just glad it's only software and hardware. Last time he tried to use a power tool, he tried to take a finger off.

[onehandle]

11. How ten years ago of you.

So if they allowed that, you'd run out and buy a copy of OSX today?

Would you?

[NYC Liberal]

17. They HAVE to buy an Mac in order to runs Windows?

Don't think so.

If you just want Windows, you wouldn't buy a Mac...obviously...

[endarkenment]

22. Thats the point.

Go buy any off the shelf pc and run any number of OS's on it - this is not a windows vs mac thing. The one os you cannot run on it is that OS from Apple.

[NYC Liberal]

23. Of course that's the case

Apple makes its money off of its HARDWARE. If they let people run their OS on other people's hardware, they wouldn't be making nearly as much money now would they?

Does Microsoft make money off of hardware? No, and this will HELP them, not hurt them, as *more* people (potentially) will be buying Windows. Which is why they don't mind it.

[guruoo]

25. Oh really?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2209769#2209883

[Solon]

39. That's an ugly hack that will make security updates and such hard to do...

Plus, who knows how STABLE it would be, it is a THIRD PARTY hack, after all. It would be best if Apple released OSX as Microsoft does Windows, within months they would get the driver support needed to run on ALL PC hardware, and probably take a HUGE junk out of Microsoft's Monopoly, especially with Vista being delayed till next year.

The closest I could get, legally, to running OSX on my PC is by downloading Darwin x86 and running GNOME on top of it. Its definately doesn't look like a Mac.

[guruoo]

51. People are saying it works just fine once...

they get past the install mod.

OSX on a Sony Vaio:
http://forum.osx86project.org/lofiversion/index.php/t2152.html
'I work at a Circuit City store in California and have been following the
OSx86 news and happenings since the begining. I had installed the OS
on my home machine (a SSE2 P4 with a Radeon 9800 card) and thought it
was cool for experiments sake, but not having full support was annoying.

I saw an open box (aka: customer return) Sony desktop one afternoon
and noticed that it had the perfect guts for a great "developer kit" machine.
Since it was already an open box PC, there wouldn't be any restocking
fee and I could "rent" the computer for the next 14 days and then get my
money back if I didn't want to keep it. True, it did cost me a bit more than
a home build (about $850 out the door), but it was much cleaner and easier.

I made myself a patched developer kit DVD, rounded up a copy of XP SP2,
downloaded the newest version of CentOS, and before I knew it, I have a
great triple-booting system. Tiger runs with all Quartz Extreme, CoreGrphcs,
LAN, Sound, Rosetta (CS2, Dreamweaver, iTunes 5), you name it. It would
be nice if Shapeshifter would run too, but I guess beggars can't be choosers.

I go to Art School and work on sweet G5's all day but haven't taken the time
to scrape together the cash for one of my own (yet) this is definately a fun
toy for now. I hope the real intelmac machines can come down a little in price!'

[Solon]

52. Doesn't run well with AMD machines, even Darwin doesn't like it that much.

So its a no go for me!

[alfredo]

40. That might be happening soon.

[Emillereid]

5. Why would anyone want to ruin a lovely Mac by putting Windows XP

on it is beyond me. I've worked on both -- and Mac is hands down better in every way. Even Word for Mac is better than Word for Windows. Besides wouldn't that be just inviting viruses onto your computer?

[confludemocrat]

19. A purity freak are we? Don't think intel viruses can jump onto Mac OS

the point being that even with the higher cost of an Apple label desktop (with three OS capability), the Mac OS can make some intrusion into settings that have locked it out for a long time. If it makes that ingress it will eventually estbablish, cause as you rightly say, it's better

[BrightKnight]

6. Unnatural

This picture is rude and wrong.

The Apple PC is actually a very good idea. Apple has alway been a major player in the hardware business. They could very quickly take over a large share of the PC laptop market. If they did it properly OS X could get a boost out of it too. It would be like a trojan horse in the PC world. It might also destroy the brand. You can't do anything without risk.

[drdtroit]

9. It;s akin to putting a lawn mower engine

In a Lamborghini!

[htuttle]

12. The thing is, sometimes you gotta mow the lawn...

...and you don't want to have to buy a seperate lawn mower if you're only going to use it every now and then. (to push your metaphor a bit farther).

[Brundle_Fly]

13. THIS IS VERY BOLD.

I have a dual G5 and a Dell P4

I use the PC for games and crunching numbers for Folding at Home DU team, it is a decent system, but for work, I prefer not having random crashes, fighting spyware, adware and viruses. My mac alleviates all these headaches and allows me to work.

I don't think I would want to run WindoZe on my mac, but I can see this as appealing to a computer buyer.

As for building a PC yourself to save money on a mac, pshaw. Sure the Powermacs are expensive, but the Imacs and Minis are completely comparable.

Imac Dual core processor, 20 inch LCD (supports external monitor) DVD burner, isight camera, 250 gig drive, ATI X1600 card....

go price that out at dell. for 1600 bones, you can come somewhat close, but you have one ugly system and an extra 25 wires.

Way to go Apple.

Very Bold.

[physioex]

16. Not Really...

The Dell does come with a wireless keyboard and mouse....

[onehandle]

18. Sixty buck option.

Paid back many times over in stability and security according to a recent study.

[confludemocrat]

20. as if the hardware was the central issue here

Point is you can pay not that much more for a setup that can run three OSs--two that don't suck and one that sucks really bad and which you mostly can't avoid, but can run out of necessity, however badly it sucks. that's a potential for market ingress by the Mac OS, which given a chance will help it survive and even take some market share away

[Catch22Dem]

28. You're right, the iMacs are VERY reasonably priced

Really, the only thing I think is overpriced at Apple are the MacBook Pros. They're actually a few hundred more than comparable laptop from Dell when you factor in the various coupons and rebates and shit. The iMacs are a REAL bargain nowadays.

[Ignacio Upton]

26. This isn't exactly new

The older MacOS systems had a software package called Virtual PC that was able to run Windows 95 and Windows 98.

[confludemocrat]

29. under Virtual PC, Windows didn't run, it crawled n/t

this is different

[politicat]

27. And when you compare current pricing, Apples are cheaper.

Yes, cheaper. Not just upgrading, not just switching out components, but buying the whole new machine. It happens - people need to do it from time to time. So, at least in this house, we buy the best thing on the market so we don't have to upgrade for at least 4 years. (It really is cheaper that way, and when we get rid of the old machines, they have some value left.)

Say you're going to buy a new machine including large LCD monitor, with a maxed out chipset, best in class video and audio chips, best possible options on optical read-write drives, a big hard drive and lots of memory. And you want the smallest possible footprint because no one likes having the computer take up 40% of the desk space.

Intel iMac - 3.4 GHz dual core (effective), 250 GB hard drive, 1 GB RAM, 802.11 wireless, 20 in LCD - 1799.
Sony VP - 3.2 GHz, 180 GB HD, 512 RAM, 802.11 wireless, 20 in LCD - 2099.
HP Media Center - 3.2 GHZ, 200 GB, 512 RAM, 802.11 wireless, 21 in LCD - 2249
Gateway All in one (Series 6, I think) 3.2 GHz, 250 GB HD, 1 GB RAM 20 in LCD) 802.11 wireless - 2014
Dell XPS - 3.2 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB HD, Tower, 20 in LCD, 802.11 wireless - 2268

And with the Mac, you get photo, movie, music and burning software built in... you have to buy them separately with windows.

Look at the numbers. Go build them for yourself. All five sites (apple.com, sony.com, HP.com, Gateway.com and Dell.com) have customizers. Build equivalent machines and see how much they cost.

[arcos]

32. Where do you get the "effective" number? nt

[politicat]

33. Benchmarking tests independently verified and extrapolated.

UMich, PCMag, CNet, Bapco-SPEC.

I first saw the story on Slashdot, followed links from there. Extrapolations of speed using Photoshop XP scripts, WinMedia encoding, and CineBench 9.5 rendering. The 2.0 Dual core processes faster than the Wintel chips by several percentage points.

It originally came up in my slashdot rss feed, and that's been overwritten, and searching through Slashdot archives is as bad as searching through Lounge archives.

[arcos]

34. I wonder how would Windows x64 do on a 3.4 Pentium D... nt

[Clovis Sangrail]

50. really?

Did Intel create a new architecture specifically for Apple?
This looks like it might be the "effective" number of how a dual core Intel chip compares to a single core Intel chip.
(not really a valid comparison when dc PCs are also available)
could you provide a link to the articles you reference?

[BrightKnight]

35. Apple could take a huge byte out of the PC hardware market.

The thought of that would make any investor drool

[Solon]

37. Wow, Apple released its own boot manager!

Color me unimpressed, I guess they wanted to be the first to do it, rather than have someone like, I don't know, port GRUB over to MacOSX so it can dual boot Windows, if they haven't already.

[northzax]

38. it's been done

people have been running XP on the dual cores since about the day after they started shipping. This is just Apple releasing freeware that is supposed to make it easy for the average person.

[Solon]

43. Actually, a LONG time before that...

I remember using Lilo(Linux Loader) as my primary boot manager, dual booting DOS with Windows 3.1 and later Windows 95 with Linux, a menu came up when you turned on the computer, asking which OS to boot. All OSes have boot managers, otherwise they can't boot on their own, Microsoft's will only boot Microsoft operating systems. To make it really complicated, my computer is a triple boot system, Linux (Primary OS), Windows 98(some games that don't work under XP), and Windows XP. The Windows family is on a separate, slave, hard drive, and so, to simplify things a little bit, the first thing that comes up is the GRUB menu, its the current popular boot manager for Linux, and you can select between Linux and Windows, then, if you choose Windows, a menu comes up from Microsoft's boot loader, asking if you want to boot XP or 98. By the way, dual core computers are computers with SMP CPUs that are very complicated, totally different than Dual Booting a system. BTW, as an FYI, Linux scales on those CPUs MUCH better than Windows XP or Server can do.

[alfredo]

41. It's not what you do it's how you do it. Apple is real good at

how you do it.

Attention to detail is Apple's thing. Get some guy at a computer store to open a G5 case so you can take a look inside. Compare it to the other brands.

[Solon]

47. Hence the reason to build your own...

I will say that Apple doesn't use cheaper parts that have a tendency to break down, Dells and Gateways are notorious for that, hence why I never buy them. I built my own Linux box, using products that are either already fully supported or have good drivers that work perfectly on Linux. Not to mention that, after I read the entire article, that Apple is basically releasing a driver disk so that Windows would work with its proprietary hardware, that's a good thing.

[alfredo]

48. That's a nice thing about Apple. You plug something in and it works

the only drivers I have had to install are for my Wacom Pad and my Kensington Expert Mouse Pro. Both worked without the drivers, but not at the level they do with the drivers.

[Solon]

49. Actually, I have a confession to make, of sorts...

The current computer I'm on was initially designed for Windows XP, bought a brand new copy of it, built the computer, etc. After swapping driver disks, twice(Sound and Graphics card), to get most of it working, a third time if you count my printer, then I was finally able to USE IT!!!

After quite a few upgrades, it all of the sudden asked, on the next boot, to reactivate, I had to call this 1-800 number and give them this LONG assed string that is the Hardware ID, I was like :wtf: So I basically thought, the hell with it, I'm installing Linux. Now, bear in mind, I'm NOT a programmer nor did I have experience with Linux, but I was an old hat at Microsoft operating systems that didn't end with the number 95, so I wasn't afraid of the command line. So I installed Ubuntu Linux, it went off without a hitch, sound card worked right out of the box, and after going to the package manager and installing the Nvidia driver, plus my printer works, right out of the box, I was damn near blown away. The best part is that my favorite game, Neverwinter Nights, works perfectly on it, in fact, its FASTER than it is under Windows. The thing that REALLY is interesting is that my hardware isn't obscure, I figured at least my SB Live! card would work under Windows, even if not at 5.1 sound, but NO, it simply DIDN'T work and the graphics was HORRIBLE at first, VGA on Windows XP really sucks, especially under the default theme.

[alfredo]

57. That's the beauty of open source. If there is a problem, someone

will jump in and help, then there will be a handful of others who will look at the code, test it, and make changes as needed. there's no boss telling them no, we want you to do this, not that.

[brooklynite]

42. I'm running it right now!

I put it on my 20" iMac this evening. Installation is a little buggy, but Windows is running smoothly with good graphics acceleration. Now I need to see how well it runs Win games.

[alfredo]

60. From the reviews I've read, games run well. Not bad for the first

public beta.