boot camp is beta. IMHO, i wouldn't plan a classroom around it that involves spending that much money until it's more tested. treat it as something that would be a nice plus if it works, but don't count on it for any critical needs. know what i mean?

I know exactly what you mean, cel4145. I won't name any names, but someone I know at Microsoft (not speaking for the company, mind you) had this to say about it:

It is essentially just running Windows XP on high-end hardware, so yes it is supposed to be at least as good as (or in some ways better than) a "beige box" running Windows XP. It gets great reviews and benchmarks playing games.

It seems like an extremely expensive thing to tinker with. But I hear these two answers for why others pursue it: 1. games, and 2. because it's there. There's also a lot of noise about market-share and strategies, but that doesn't change whether or not a product serves a purpose for you.

I am confident that it works as well as the least-common-denominator of Windows XP (with its peculiarities), plus Apple hardware (with its peculiarities, for more information, search for "apple first-gen").

It's a beta, and there's no support provided. There have also been some reports of problems where a few users could not boot OS X again after booting Windows.

That to me makes it suitable for personal experimenting or limited classroom use, but not for department or corporate purposes.

I concur with both your friend at Microsoft and cel4145.  Beta means no support, which means it's a bad move to spend money on it in an educational environment where any problems could have a lasting impact. 

That being said, my suggestion for where to look for more comprehensive reviews of BootCamp would be in Mac user forums.  These are the people most interested in the performance characteristics and usability.  Most of what I've read indicates that there have been very few bugs with the beta release.  Still, it's risky to use it because I have a feeling this is going to remain in a beta state at least for a while.  A lot of the hang-ups are going to come from specific driver issues.  Mac has released drivers with the beta for the Mac hardware, but it's hardware that wasn't designed to ever interact with a Windows operating system.  So I think Apple won't want to offer any kind of guarantees until they're absolutely certain everything's copasetic, and even then it may be that they make changes in their hardware for the next generation Macs to solve any issues a driver can't clear up. 

The point about high-end hardware is a good one, and there are about ten year's worth of people I've wanted to call up and say, "I told you so,"  ever since Apple announced it would be using Intel's processors.  Mac enthusiasts have long touted the superiority of their desktop machines, but as someone who built PCs for a living, I've always said the only thing about a Mac that's redeeming in that respect is the quality control Apple maintains and the high standards they've set for what kind of hardware they will put in their boxes.  Their processors were not better. 

The difference is that PCs are built on "open architecture," which is what made it possible for so many PC manufacturers to enter the market.  Some are simply made to higher standards than others.  There simply wasn't an opportunity for that to happen with Mac's, because no one made them-- except of course for a brief time in '96/'97 when the very same thing began to happen with Mac clones.  When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he closed everything up again, and the legend of the superior machine went relatively unscathed. 

Bottom line, Mac's are just made better than your average PC.  Getting a comparable PC takes a lot more research and most of the major PC manufacturers (Dell included!) are out, but you can count on all of the hardware working, which, unfortunately, BootCamp won't claim just yet.

The BootCamp solution is okay, but I am more interested in Parallels' Workstation. It's only $40 right now, supports almost everything USB on both platforms (now) and runs Windows within OS X. There is a speed test on Geek.com where it seems the speed is about 90% of running Windows alone. I can live with that, for the convenience of not rebooting.

http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/mac/

Running Linux on the Mac is pretty cool, especially if you like OSS solutions that aren't ported to the Mac, yet, and don't work well with Fink. BootCamp can be used for Linux, but not easily. You have to install XP, then Linux with LILO or another loader.

As for speed, it is about what is inside the Mac. Intel has customized the motherboards, and the ATI video cards and drivers in the iMac and MacBook have been optimized as well. If you take an ATI card and crank it, you can even overclock the card on an iMac (you can on a MacBook, but it becomes a portable cooking surface that will burn your lap).

My own use of an Intel system has convinced me to buy one ASAP. I am just torn between wanting a 17" MacBook and waiting for whatever replaces the G5 tower.

The PowerPC chip was and is a great chip, but IBM needed much, much higher volume to develop a low-power version. Just look at any list of supercomputers and the PowerPC is a serious factor. However, the liquid cooled G5 shows what a problem the chip can be.

Anyone really into chip design theory knows the flaws of the x86. But, Intel (and especially AMD) has done a lot to move towards a hybrid RISC/CISC design that does more with lower power requirements. That's key, today.

Apple has talked about borrowing ideas from the old Amiga -- have more chips handle special tasks, so the Core Duo can be used for processing tasks. It will be interesting to see how Apple/Intel designs influence Dell, HP, and others.

So far, even PC World and PC Magazine are impressed with the Windows performance of the new Macs. I'd just suggest you not use a mini -- which has lousy Intel video with shared memory. No where near as fast as the iMac with XP.

- CSW