Just coming from Win and need Help with bootcamp/parallels+general osx stuf

Question

Well I absolutely love my Mac. I'm just having some problems affording it financially, but when I compare this new MacBook Pro to other like computers, there's a very very small difference in the hardware, and Im usually building laptops that are similiar to this for around 2k anyways. So I'm not 100% sure if I'll keep this or not, and maybe settle for cheaper PC that's under 1.5k (because Apple charges you a 10% open box fee) and buy a mac when I'm in a better position, or just keep this and see what I can do.
But a few of the things that are making me miss a PC might push me toward a cheaper PC. And so maybe someone here can help me out before I make a decision.
First off, is there anything that's the equivalent to a disk defragmentor for OSX?
Second, is the graphics card really powerful in this Macbook 15 inch 2.4 ghz (the newest one)
Im also having a problem with this keyboard and my favorite game. Basically I need to hold down certain keys (control, alt, shift and space) in order to use skills. But for some reason when I hold down any of these buttons, it only reads it once. So I have to push it every time I'd say, want to heal myself or hit a monster... and that might not seem like a lot but if you play a game for 1 hour + (I'd usually play around 4 hours) it's going to absolutely kill my fingers and make playing the game take a lot longer.
Now I'm using parallels (the only way to play my game) and whenever I try to install a new KB, because I've found out that the way a KB is wired will determine whether or not you can spam a key or not (Like a cheap USB one wont work, but a more expensive logitech one allows you to) but it either
1) Crashes Parallels and my Win VM
or
2) It sets up whatever kb I use to be used with Mac OSX's drivers which means no matter what the KB is, ctrl alt space and shift cant be spammed.
I'm also unable to use FRAPS, a PC video capturing program used for games while running parallels. My FPS constantly dips to 0 which lags me in the game, and I can't find a good recording program thats OSX side and that works while Parallels is running (I emailed parallels about what vid they used in their demo but no response)
Now if use bootcamp, will I have nothing to worry about? Will all of the hardware act like it should act natively on a PC? As in will my nVidia graphics card act like it normally would on a PC instead of it being some kind of virtualized hardware or something like on parallels?
Thanks for the help guys... 2 weeks to decide on whether or not I keep th is laptop....
Wii code: 2053-8430-7334-7335
MGO Name: Crim, [BBB]Crim, Pacifist, Kaze, oSoiFong, A NOOB.

Answer 1

The graphics card is a higher performance GPU than the X1600 in the previous MBP models. As for "really powerful" you don't provide any basis for comparison. Visit the ATI site to find out the specifications for the model.
Well I understand that much. I just mean as far as a graphics card in general goes, is it strong enough to support a variety of games (both PC and Mac)? This is my first computer without a crappy intergrated graphics card which could barely handle games from the late 1990s.
As for keyboard shortcuts I'm not sure if you're referring a Mac or a PC game. However, this reference may help. If the game is a Mac version you'll need to contact the game's developer about any problems with how to use the game on a Mac. If you read the Parallels documentation it will explain how to generate any special keyboard characters when in Windows.
Umm it's not that. Like I first figured out this problem with all electronics in general when I was a kid playing with one of those press and speak books. What I found out was that, let's pretend there were 3 buttons. One was cow going moo, one was a cat meowing and one was a dog barking. If you held down the Cow button and pressed the Cat button, the cow would still Moo. If you held down the Cow and press the dog button, the cow would still moo. However if you pressed and held the cat button, then pressed the cow button the cat would stop meowing, and the moo would override it.
That same principle applies to keyboards from what I've seen. I know there are some keyboards where I can use the control button and the alt button at the same time, and some keyboard I can't use. I can't blame the game, because there ARE keyboards that work the way I want it to. And I'm not talking about keyboard shortcuts. Pressing Control+Alt isn't a shortcut in a game, just two different commands. Like one is jump, one is attack. In the game you can Jump and Attack with some keyboards, some keyboards only let you jump or attack.
Another example is if I put my jump key on the letter "a" and if I hold a, I jump over and over until I let go. but if I put jump to my space bar, I jump once then stop. For some reason it won't repeat keys while in a game. Same goes for other buttons, ctrl, shift, and alt.
Does that make things a little more clear?
but what I'm going to do is try my mac keyboard on a PC and see if it has the same limitations.
If Parallels is crashing either you have a faulty installation, your OS X installation is corrupted, or you have not allocated sufficient RAM for the VM. You need at least 2 GBs of installed RAM to use virtualization software and should allocate at least 384 MBs or RAM to Windows XP and 512 MBs to Vista. If you have only 1 GB of RAM installed your system won't be very stable when you try to run Parallels with Windows on 384 or 512 MBs of RAM.
I have the newest 15 inch which has gigs. And I've tried setting Parallels to both 1 and 512 (windows xp) and I worded the problem wrong. Parallels doesnt crash, parallels runs fine. What happens is Windows XP gets the blue screen of death whenever I try to install a usb device. Since I can't find a logitech keyboard that has drivers/software for a mac, I tried using a Windows one and tried installing it on my XP... and thats when I got the BSOD
Parallels uses all the native Mac hardware via the virtualization software. No special Mac drivers are required nor special Windows drivers.
If you cannot run a Windows program in Parallels it's not a problem with OS X. Complain to Parallels.
It's not that a program isn't running. It's running fine, it's just my FPS gets really low. What I'm trying to figure out is if my graphics card isn't good enough in general, or if it's not good enough to handle parallels and osx and a game with a video capture all at once.
Boot Camp runs Windows natively on the hardware just as if you were using any other dedicated Windows hardware. "Will I have nothing to worry about?" I don't know. Boot Camp provides the necessary Windows drivers for all currently produced Intel Macs. You can install Windows XP with Service Pak 2 or Vista. Read the Boot Camp documentation to find out more.
Well I meant will I have nothing to worry about as in, will my graphics card be as effective on my bootcamped win XP as it would be if it was a native XP laptop, or will it be slightly less effective since it was based for a mac intel computer... does that make sense or do I need to reword it?