2 Questions before buying MacBook

[WannaApple?]

So, I am a disgruntled PC user, wanting to switch to a Macbook. Not sure what I have in mind yet as I'll make an appointment with a Personal Shopping Assistant when I get ready to buy. However, 2 quick questions:

1) I dont have the money to buy one right now before the Free ipod promotion ends, but will have the money near Christmas. Is Apple known to offer any promotions/discounts/freebies, etc. near the holidays? Or what is their usual schedule of promotions?

2) As I have always been a PC user, I have a boatload of paid, expensive software that is for PC only like 2 Corel suites, Flash/Swish, printer drivers, MS Office, etc. I have heard that a Mac can be partitioned to run Windows as well, so are there any EASY instructions on how to do this, would it be required, etc? Please advise

Thanks for any help!

 

[techound1]

1) you're looking at THE biggie right now - doesn't get better than the free ipod. Look at refurbs in the non-ed store - they are cheaper that what is available in the ed store - and it's a year round thing.

2) you can do this two ways. Run Bootcamp or run a virtual machine (Parallels or VMware). There are gobs of instructions on both if you do a quick google. I would recommend using a virtual machine because you don't have to reboot if you need to grab something from windows. Others, however, wouldn't go without bootcamp. I'm sure there are lots of pros and cons debates here if you search on that one too.

 

[rockthecasbah]

1. Generally Apple has only given major promotional items like the iPod during the summer. Throughout they year they run Printer rebates to the value of $99 so you can get a low-end one "free" or a better one discounted, but beyond that don't expect something too significant.