Considering my first Mac Book Pro -anyone have any experience with shopping for a Mac? I'll need Parallels or VMWare to run my Win Dev stuff?

Get the 15 in one. What you can do is try using Microsoft's Cashback program or buying discounted gift cards from Best Buy and then buy the Mac Book Pro. The Mac Book Pro lines are amazing.

I have the former unibody Mac Book and love it. The multi touch & swipes are so useful.

Regarding win dev. If booting up directly to windows is not an issue, whereby you do not need to see mac and windows side by side, you can save some greens by using bootcamp. Which is built into mac osx itself.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.