In April 2006, Apple released a beta version of Boot Camp, a free software product that enables the installation of Windows XP (Home Edition or Professional with Service Pack 2) on an Intel-based Mac. (A beta version is not the final version, but it is ready for end users to try and test.) Essentially, Boot Camp splits your Mac into two hard drives (called partitions), one for Mac OS X and one for Windows. An important note--you must supply your own full, single-disk version of Windows XP. Apple neither supplies Windows with Boot Camp nor sells it. In addition, Microsoft does not provide any support for installing its operating system on Macs. Because Boot Camp installs Windows in a separate partition, it does not allow switching back and forth between Windows XP and Mac OS X on the fly. To do that, you need to reboot the computer, which is somewhat of an inconvenience. Parallel Workstation is a software product that approaches Windows on the Mac in a different manner. It creates what is called a virtual machine on the Mac. A virtual machine runs a guest operating system (in this case, Windows XP) within the host operating system (Mac OS X). The difference between Parallels Workstation and Boot Camp is that while the Windows XP environment created through Boot Camp runs Windows faster, it requires rebooting to go back and forth between operating systems. On the other hand, switching between systems using Parallels Workstation does not require rebooting. So, if you are choosing between these two fine methods of running Windows XP on your Mac, you need to decide which is more important--a faster running Windows XP or easier switching between systems.