Not read the whole thread so apologies for repetition. Had a 2011 spec MBP since a week or two after the launch. More than happy with it, and the experience generally is much better than I've had with Windows. There's far more chance of stuff 'just working' IME.
On the running legacy windows apps, I got by without mostly, but I've been very disappointed with the GPS software available for the mac. I can't stand the mac basecamp app for the simple reason that waypoint names must be unique across all projects. This is unbelievably asinine, do the people who write this software ever actually use a GPS?
So I decided eventually that I wanted to run Tracklogs Digital Mapping, and invested in a copy of Parallels. I used the migrate mode, basically you install Parallels on the mac, and a small application on Windows and they talk to each other. Parallels then sucks off your Windows installation from the PC and re-creates your set-up inside the virtual machine. Then you have everything you had in Windows, integrated onto the mac. Your desktop and documents folders can be combined so file sharing between windows and mac is trivial. Performance of Windows in the VM is good apart from the usual slow start-up and such.
The coherence mode of parallels is nice - you basically treat apps in Windows as just another app on your mac. They launch in their own window. Or you can run windows in a window, or in full-screen mode. When you plug in the GPS it offers to connect it to your windows or your mac, and you can make it remember that choice. Before I did the migration, I did a big clean-up on windows, reducing the hard disc space used to about 28G from 75G. I only use windows for basically the GPS stuff. I don't have office, and I can't see the point of it with Google docs.
One thing you might find useful is an app called smartsleep, because it has a plugin you can download which gives 'insomnia mode'. This prevents the laptop sleeping on closing the lid. So if you are doing something time consuming (e.g. defragment your windows virtual hard drive) then it's nice to be able to shut the lid.
Since iOS5 I've been using the readling list feature of safari a lot. If I see a link on twitter on the phone, I open it in safari then add it to the reading list. This is synced via icloud to the mac which I can read the articles on better. The reader mode is also useful for reading articles in a more clear layout. Works with most major sites I've tried.
