Your thoughts on the Macbook Pro?

I'm considering getting a Macbook Pro both for school and personal use; I am majoring in graphic design so it generally follows that I would get one eventually, but until now I've had no real need for a laptop and have done everything else on a PC. I'm starting to like OSX more and more but would still use parallels or virtual PC or something with Windows. Questions that I have for any previous/current/future macbook owners;

The $2000 macbook pro should suffice right? Or does that extra video memory really make a noticable difference? I would like to play games as well if possible, but $500's a lot of money lol.

What would you suggest for running Windows? Think Vista's ready or would you stick with XP even though they likely will stop updating it soon? Also, bootcamp, virtual pc or parallels?

Anything else I should know or consider before this purchase? Thanks for any responses.

>>5
... Wow.  I can't even think of an insult great enough to describe  the amount of idiocy and ignorance in that post.

1.) Linux has had all of that and more since 1999
2.) Mac has had all of that since 2001

In the realm of operating systems, Windoze will always be playing catch-up.