BeOS 5 Personal Edition is a free download and is worth a go, since it only totals 42MB for a plush multimedia-oriented operating system. A UNIX-derived OS, BeOS enjoys a devoted following and has some great features, especially for those involved in multimedia content creation.

In many ways, Mac OS X owes something to BeOS, which has great stability and a colourful and well-designed interface. Indeed, BeOS is a superb operating system in many ways, with quick boot times and impressive multimedia features.

The download edition has its drawbacks, since it takes up 512MB on a hard disk. It's not possible to define an install partition greater or less than this amount. But then, the downloadable version of BeOS isn't designed to be a replacement for the operating system currently in use, but more as a trial. The Pro version provides full control over partition sizes.

Of course, the 42MB download file doesn't carry with it everything you might need, but we were amazed by what Be has managed to pack in. In terms of devices, users will find quite good support for multimedia-oriented devices such as sound cards, video capture cards, etc. Printer support is also very good, with drivers for many consumer inkjet printers. For extra software, some additional downloading is necessary. www.BeBits.com is a good place to start looking.

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BeOS may be a lesser-known operating system, but it has a great deal going for it and represents a simple way to use another operating system on a PC without doing any damage to an existing Windows installation.