Thanks for the responses, guys.

Believe me, I'm going to try my best to use the Mac OS as much as possible. There's simply some Windows programs that I've used day in and day out for years now that I can't/don't want to give up. I'm sure there are Mac alternatives to some of them, but many of them have Windows alternatives that haven't swayed me. Still, my plan was exactly as you described, Tom. I'd use Parallels or Fusion to boot the Boot Camp installation, and just boot into Windows for gaming (I don't game much now but I might if I had a beast of a machine like this one).

One of the biggest reasons I want to switch is to get into an environment that's actually friendly for video editing. I'm so sick of playing the codec game in Windows, and the software that's available has never impressed me. I hate Adobe's UI on all their programs, except for Audition (but they didn't make that - I loved Cool Edit Pro). I've been looking at Final Cut and even iMovie and they both look like better alternatives. Hell, even when it comes to basic video conversion, it looks like Visualhub beats the pants off any Windows app out there.

Bitt - yeah, I ruled out the Mac Mini a long while ago because of the resolution limitation. My 30" is native at 2560x1600, and the Mac Mini, iMac, and MacBook cannot do that. Only the MacBook Pro and Mac Pro can. Plus, I need some decent processing power for video stuff.

Thanks for the student discount links. My brother in law is in college right now, so maybe I'll work something out with him. It certainly looks like the big savings come when you start adding a lot of stuff, so I'll figure out if it's worth the hassle (at the base it's $200 cheaper, so that's pretty good because I can't customize the Amazon box).

Thanks again for the info, folks. I think I'd be happy with the longevity of the purchase for sure. I really don't care about overclocking but I thought I'd ask to be thorough. Thanks for all the help, and now I have to find the cash to drop on this bad boy.