So we have a few people who have figured out how to put Mac OS X on a Thinkpad, and even a few who have figured out how to put a hacked version of XP on an Intel-based mac. So my question is this, is there any value to having a triple-booting machine, other than to wow your less-savvy relatives at Christmas with your multiple operating system installation prowess? Where does it end? At what point does it become ridiculous? Booting 3 OS's, 4, 5, 6 (are there that many)? In mind this is where the virtual machine steps onto the stage, takes off its hat and bows to the crowd. Virtual PC's can really make a multi-booting environment easy, effective and keep costs down. Will we see more and more multi-booting environments in the future? Any chance we will see Palm OS and Windows Mobile OS on the same device? I doubt it, but you have to ask yourself, what is the point here?

I think by using multi-booting machines, users out on the sordid landscape are trying to tell us something. No one's operating system is perfect. Microsoft continues in their own classic way of writing OS's which typically doesn't change much, Apple keeps changing things, but only so much as they need to stay competitive and on the cutting edge, and Linux (not unlike rabbits) has so many cousins and distros now it's more like picking out jelly bean flavors with your kids than choosing an operating system. My point is that OS makers should really take a hard look at what the competition is doing, or at least what the major reasons are that consumers use their products. This will tell them why and how they should build their OS's to suit the actual needs of the actual public, not the developer (or CEO's) pipe dreams.

Perhaps the big reasons people use more than one or two operating systems is that the base functionality cannot be used in other OS's. Windows cannot be based on Linux and run like windows without a major or complete code rewrite. Hopefully Vista's strengthened kernel will provide that much needed stability we've all been missing and pinning for so long.