You've already been given the best information you could be given....last time I decided to download BeOs again, it had an option to install it in the same partition as windows, kinda like Mandrake does (or did). You don't have to reformat and add seperate partitions. It won't run as fast, but you'll still get the experience you need for the paper. The one thing that made me not use it regularly, is what makes a lot of people not want to use linux....it doesn't support much (read: as much, or their particular) HW, though admittedly, it does quite a bit. The programs aren't there, or if they are, they aren't up to par. I'm not ragging it, it very well could be an excellent OS, there just wasn't enough there for me to continue using it enough to even begin to to touch on the security aspects of it. If more people jumped on the bandwagon and decided to develop it, (like Linux), it could be great, but the support isn't there.