idiot seeks help as fledgling mac owner--bootcamp, parallel, vmware?

[phobi]

Hi, listen I've been considering buying a mac for ages. I was going to get an hp and wait, but now that Snow Leopard is the new OS and I won't have to purchase and install it I'm thinking that this may be the time to strike.

Am I wrong?

I know this must've already been asked a thousand times but... boot camp? parallel? advise? I know you can have both and whatnot so I'm prepared to take some flak.
Mostly I'll use this for windows exclusive games so: boot camp. But I'll also be downloading stuff and probably will need office which I hear req's parallel ($100 CAN$). So Pros/cons? Where do you load bootcamp? (I know I could search but your recommendation will make me happy).

What is vmware and what's it for?

Any other general tips for 1st time mac users.

 

[spinnerlys]

Hi, listen I've been considering buying a mac for ages. I was going to get an hp and wait, but now that Snow Leopard is the new OS and I won't have to purchase and install it I'm thinking that this may be the time to strike.

Am I wrong?

What? Mac OS X 10.6 has been out since the end of August 2009, and it is installed on every Mac purchased first hand since September 2009.
What are you getting at?

I know this must've already been asked a thousand times but... boot camp? parallel? advise? I know you can have both and whatnot so I'm prepared to take some flak.
Mostly I'll use this for windows exclusive games so: boot camp. But I'll also be downloading stuff and probably will need office which I hear req's parallel ($100 CAN$). So Pros/cons? Where do you load bootcamp? (I know I could search but your recommendation will make me happy).

MRoogle is a good tool to search these forums.
VMWare Fusion threads - VMWare Fusion homepage
Parallels Desktop threads - Parallels Desktop homepage
Boot Camp threads - Boot Camp homepage - Wikipedia article about Boot Camp

What is vmware and what's it for?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware - VMWare Fusion is a software to run other OSs as a virtual machine (VM) inside Mac OS X, like Parallels Desktop and Sun Virtual Box.

Any other general tips for 1st time mac users.

Also have a look at the following links, as the information presented there might be helpful in your future endeavours into Mac OS X and could clear up initial confusion and may even prevent harm to your system or your files.

 

[kk08053]

Parallels is not needed for Office. Microsoft has made a Mac version of Office for years. If you don't like the idea of having to cough up more money to Microsoft, Apple's iWork suite is very nice to work with. Some of the advanced spreadsheet features of Excel might be missing in Numbers (apple spreadsheet program), but Pages and Keynote (the equivalent of Word and PowerPoint) are exceptional, are compatible with Office and the entire suite only cost $79. I'm not a gamer, so I would check a couple of the other forum pages in the gaming section for advice. Unless you use a great deal of Windows specific software, I don't think you'll need Windows anywhere near as much as you think you do...And as you said, you can always use bootcamp.. (gaming is really one of the bigger reasons for running a Windows machine anymore)