In a new development that will excite some and nauseate others, resellers have been spotted in the wild shipping Macs (both desktop and portable) preinstalled with the OS That Gates Built:

The resellers, which include a small Utah-based company and a major California computer online warehouse, are bundling Windows XP with standard Macintosh models, and pre-installing the Microsoft operating system using the Boot Camp dual-boot application that Apple released earlier this month.

This is all made possible, of course, by Boot Camp, Apple's recently released utility that enables users to dual-boot OS X and Windows XP on Intel-based Macs. Reaction to Boot Camp far has been mostly positive, with the general consensus being that it works as advertised (i.e. it lets you boot Windows XP with comprehensive driver support). These resellers think it's a good enough idea to try to make an extra buck on. At this point I feel it's worth pointing out that neither the resellers nor Apple are providing support of any kind for Windows XP. Have your cake and eat it, too fellas!

The main question here is whether this is the beginning (and culmination) of a niche market, or is this merely the foreshadowing of a much larger—and stranger—hybrid market to come? Will there come a day when the general consumer simply expects their shiny new Mac to arrive with two OSes installed?