Now students and faculty members can choose "the best tools for their specific needs," Halamka said. Users who have tried the beta release of Boot Camp have reported that it makes Windows XP applications run "blazingly fast" on a Mac, he said.

Not everyone is sold on Boot Camp, though.

"It's not as neat and clean as it might sound," said Roger Kay, an analyst at Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc. in Wayland, Mass. "They've filled a hole here, but it's more of an experimental thing. I don't think it'll change the game that much."

Depending on how users format Windows XP on their Macs, they may or may not be able to read and write data between the Windows and Mac OS X partitions, Kay said. And businesses still have to buy a Windows XP license from Microsoft for each system that Boot Camp runs on, he noted.

A work in progress