If you're living on planet Earth, regardless of whether you are a Mac fanatic or not, you most probably have heard of Boot Camp. If you haven't, well, welcome to planet Earth and let me brief you on what you've been missing.

Boot Camp lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on Mac. This ingenious application will burn a CD with all the Mac-specific drivers for Windows - graphics, networking, audio, AirPort wireless, Bluetooth, the Eject key (on Apple keyboards), and brightness control for built-in displays. This CD will also install a Startup Disk control panel for Windows.

Now that you have knowledge on what the community has been buzzing about for a while, here's another news for you and the whole Boot Camp lookers-on as well: Apple has just released a new Boot Camp public beta installer.

Sadly, Apple did not divulge what was new in this release. If you do get to try this out, please be kind enough to share the updates with us all via the comments below.

Needed to run Boot Camp are the following:

• Mac OS X 10.4.6 or later
• Intel-based Mac
• The latest firmware update for your Intel Mac
• A genuine installation disc for Microsoft Windows XP, Service Pack 2, Home or Professional (no multi-disc, upgrade or Media Center versions)
• A blank recordable CD

Download: [Boot Camp public beta installer]