I've installed BeOS on my Desktop running Win 98 few years ago. Now I'm running Win XP on my dell 600m inspiron laptop and I've downloaded BeOS5 Personal Edition in the end it asked me to create a boot floppy. I got no floppy drive, can a create a boot CD. If so is there a ISO image or something i can download. Since XP is based on NT/2000 I believe I need boot CD everytime I wanna get into BeOS. Which is the free version of BeOS and where can I find an CD image of it so that I can install and boot from it. I know these questions were asked zillion times here any suggestions are appreciated.

Well, if you put XP on it's version of NTFS you will not be able to use BeOS in it's PE install. PE uses a filesystem within a file. The boot floppy can use ntfs but not the newer security with ntfs on XP. If the version of on FAT then yes it will work. What I might suggest is to use a spare partiton and get either Max or Developer Editon. There is also a free demo of Zeta. Go to bebits dot com for the first two and search for zeta yellowtab demo cd for the last. If you have the floppy image you could install it as track one on a cd but that is complex in windows.

I should proof read more often.