Ongoing efforts to boot Windows XP on the recently released Intel Macs appears to be coming within reach. This, despite that last week Microsoft revealed that they did not intend to support Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) in the upcoming release of Windows Vista. Since the new Intel Macs only support EFI (and not BIOS), this was perceived to be a setback for the possibility of dual-booting Windows (Vista) and Mac OS X.

The efforts of a well publicized contest to boot Windows XP on the MacBook Pro, however, appears to be

reaching fruition.

Details are spotty right now, but it looks like we will have a winner by the end of this week. This is the latest screen shot from narf2006’s flickr account

While the photos obviously don't prove anything, they are presently looking for testers for the procedure.

Meanwhile, another group is working on a more universal solution by developing their own BIOS (BAMBIOS) which would theoretically allow the Intel Macs to support any legacy BIOS-requiring software (Linux, Windows XP, Vista etc...).