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I'll be losing the 7200 rpm hard drive, but the graphics card is a little nicer and I'd get a larger screen. Its a tiny bit thicker than the M1330 and about half a pound heavier.


You can get a 7200 drive in the MacBook Pro, you will need to do a custom order though either at the store, or at apple.com. And the video card is much nicer. Don't let the model numbers fool you, the card in the Dell is just a smidge above integrated graphics performance (it even still shares the main system memory), while the MacBook Pro has a full dedicated card. My MBP has been my main gaming machine now for a bit over 1.5 years.

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Okay so I just watched that video and VMWare Fusion does look pretty convenient. Is it really that simple though? Running both OS's doesn't slow things down? This program would make switching over a lot more convenient but I'm still a little hesitant.


VMWare and Parallels are both pretty much "that simple". Both offer hands free XP installs where you give it a CD or ISO file, and a CD key and walk away. Then both offer seamless modes where OS X and Windows apps mingle. As long as you have enough RAM to avoid swapping to disk, performance is really fast. I personally prefer VMWare for the 64 bit compatibility, SMP, and better USB support, but Parallels leads in some other areas like games. However, unless it's a really old game, it's not going to be fully playable in Parallels or VMWare. You will need to do a full boot into Windows. Both solutions can also boot off a Windows partition on your Mac created by Boot Camp, so you don't have to have 2 separate installs.