So you just picked up a shiny new Mac, but you just can’t tear yourself away from Windows. You can’t just quit cold turkey, it’s not fair! This hasn’t been a problem since the introduction of Boot Camp, but up until recently, you couldn’t run Windows 7 on a Mac. Now you can.

Last year, Apple promised that Boot Camp would be compatible with Windows 7, but the new year came and went with no new release. Now, just over half a month past the day of the ball dropping, Apple has released an update for Boot Camp.

I’ve never run Boot Camp myself, I’m a big fan of VMWare’s Fusion, but honestly, I don’t find myself using it very often. There’s really only one Windows product that I need to use – Microsoft Money – and since they’re discontinuing the product, I won’t have any other use for it anytime soon. But for those of you who have separation anxiety, this is a nice little update that will make your transition that much easier.

According to the latest Boot Camp instructions bundled with the new Mac Pros “if you have a Mac Pro introduced in late 2007 or later, you can use a 64-bit version of Windows Vista”.

This additional support is not something that Apple has announced, and I don’t know anyone who’s ever run the 64-bit version of Windows (mainly because the driver situation with the OS is still making it almost impossible to use). Still, if you have a new Mac Pro and you want to runt the 64bit version of Microsoft’s OS, you apparently can.

In other Vista and Mac related news, Microsoft has eased up on their ToS, and Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium are now eligible to legally be run in a virtual machine (like the ones created by Parallels and VM Ware’s Fusion). While I seriously doubt that Microsoft’s ToS have been keeping any of you from installing Vista on your virtual machine if you really wanted to, it’s nice to see Gates and Co. officially allow it – so that companies can officially support it.

Thanks to Daniel for sending this in.

If you haven’t downloaded the Bootcamp Beta yet – then you’re out of luck. Apple.com/bootcamp no longer takes you to a Beta download page, now it simply redirects you to the Leopard Bootcamp feature page.

Don’t worry though, your Windows partition isn’t about to stop working, the only thing that’s going to expire is the Bootcamp utility to make partitians…and even that’s not going to expire until the end of the year.

UPDATE: Doug writes in to tell us that that the direct link to the bootcamp beta still works…for now.

Omar Shahine, a Microsoft Employee, and blogger – posted his thoughts on Boot Camp 1.4 this weekend.

He’s very impressed with the improvements, including the use of the Apple Remote to control iTunes and Windows Media Player, as well as the on screen graphics that Apple has added for adjusting volume and ejecting disks.

His final conclusion?

I have yet to install Windows via Boot Camp on my Mac because I need to clean up my hard drive before I’ll be able to – Omar has just convinced me to take the time to do it.

Click Here to read the full article.

Boot Camp 1.2 beta includes:

* Support for Windows Vista (32-bit)
* Updated drivers, including but not limited to trackpad, AppleTime (synch), audio, graphics, modem, iSight camera
* Support the Apple Remote (works with iTunes and Windows Media Player)
* A Windows system tray icon for easy access to Boot Camp information and actions
* Improved keyboard support for Korean, Chinese, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Russian, and French Canadian
* Improved Windows driver installation experience
* Updated documentation and Boot Camp on-line help in Windows
* Apple Software Update (for Windows XP and Vista)

Boot Camp is still in public Beta. Click Here to download the latest version.