Today I set out to install XP Home on my MacPro. Mainly for playing games but also so I could see how it compares with OSX. I installed BootCamp1.1Beta, burnt the Macintosh Drivers CD and rebooted to install windows. All of this happened under the control of the Boot Camp installer and went smoothly.

The XP Home installation went well if a little slow! Still took about 25 minutes to get to the point where its copying files for the start menu.

Once booted into XP Home from the hard drive all hell broke loose. I inserted the Macintosh Driver CD, it auto ran and started installing drivers. Great. However after a few minutes windows started appearing. "Windows has found new hardware... do you want to look for drivers?". I said no to everything. The windows just kept popping up though. Repeatedly. Then I realised that the Macintosh Driver installation had crashed.... oh fuck. This wasn't a good experience.

I killed the installation and rebooted. Things seemed to have settled down. But no. I've now got a load of warnings in the hardware control panel. 'Drivers can't start properly' Im told.

I can only get one video card to work (despite the two cards being identical). XP Home only supports two CPUs so half my processing power is going unused. My sound card works but only through both the lineout and internal speakers. I can't turn the internal speaker off!

I dont know if this is Apples plan but its not been a nice experience. I may try again. But I may now. It plays Battlefield 2 fine so at least Im happy with that It didnt play PKR too well but thats a different story