New iMac as a monitor for XP Bootcamp on an old Air

Hello all -
Need your assistance getting an accurate answer on an Apple related issue. Trip to the Apple store (including speaking to 5 employees, 2 of whom were genius bar staff) did not provide the clarity/certainty I am after. More on that later.
I have a work issued 11 inch Air (running XP via Bootcamp). I cannot boot the Apple OS, nor make any changes to the XP environment.
My Air is an "older" model: 11 inch with mini-display port, not the "spark" firewire port, but same size of course.
I am thinking about buying an iMac, which would be dual purpose...second computer and monitor for my Air. But I am unsure if an iMac will do this smoothly with my Air (or which model can or can't do it).
Let me tell you what I have done:
- two visits to the Apple store
- conversation #1 (yes, it will work...21 or 27 inch...no mention of firewire or mini-display issue, no issues with XP on Bootcamp)
- conversation #2 (yes, but 27 inch only....it is ok that Air has mini-display and is using XP via Bootcamp)
- conversation #3 (yes, but you need to buy an old model iMac that still has mini-display port, not firewire)
- conversation #4 (no, it will not work with Bootcamp with any configuration)
- conversation #5 (yes, will work with any 27 inch model...use mini-display to VGA (from Air), use firewire to VGA (from iMac), and then use a male-male VGA to connect the two
Apple has a knowledge base article on the topic, which offers yet another view. However only speaks to 2009 and 2010 models. I am unable to find a similar entry for current iMac models.
Using a 27-inch iMac (Late 2009 or Mid 2010) as an external display
Apple won't test any of this at the genius bar (well, the genius I had - conversation #4 above).
Any thoughts?
Thanks
Dave

dlt1974 wrote:
My Air is an "older" model: 11 inch with mini-display port, not the "spark" firewire port, but same size of course.
Are you talking about the Thunderbolt port on newer Macs? If so, see http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3775 & http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4617.
It appears you cannot use Target Display Mode with one of the newest Macs unless the other Mac also has a Thunderbolt port, & that only Windows 7 supports Thunderbolt, not Windows XP.

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