Questions about Macbook

I am about to go into my first year of college this July, and I've been looking for a laptop. I've used iMacs before a little bit, but I have a few questions about the Macbook Pro and Mac OS X 10.5. So if someone can help me that would be great.
First of all: How is the Macbook Pro overall as a laptop? Is it a pretty good one?
Secondly: How good is the back-up utility? (Time Machine) Is it pretty good? How big of an external hard drive would I need to back up everything?
Third question: How is the program Boot Camp? I'm planning on putting Windows XP Pro on the Mac using Boot Camp. How is compatibility? Also I've heard that if you make the partition for Windows less than 32 GB, the partitions would be able to "see" each other... does that mean Mac OS X can read FAT 32 drives? Would I be able to transfer files between the two OSs with that setup?
and lastly: Would Mac OS X be able to read my flash drive?
Thanks in advance everyone

batwing20 wrote:
First of all: How is the Macbook Pro overall as a laptop? Is it a pretty good one?
I find it phenomenal, the best laptop I've used. OS X is a versatile and stable OS, and the hardware hasn't given me any trouble.
Secondly: How good is the back-up utility? (Time Machine) Is it pretty good? How big of an external hard drive would I need to back up everything?
It works great for me. You can't be nit-picky, so if you want a backup program with lots of settings there are plenty of options, but for those of us who just want something to fall back on when the HD goes kaput or we delete a file on accident, its perfect.
Third question: How is the program Boot Camp? I'm planning on putting Windows XP Pro on the Mac using Boot Camp. How is compatibility? Also I've heard that if you make the partition for Windows less than 32 GB, the partitions would be able to "see" each other... does that mean Mac OS X can read FAT 32 drives? Would I be able to transfer files between the two OSs with that setup?
I haven't used it enough to answer the file sharing questions, but in my limited use it's been excellent, and many friends rave.
It's worth noting that when PC World was testing the fastest Windows Vista laptops, #1 was the MBP running Vista on BootCamp.
and lastly: Would Mac OS X be able to read my flash drive?
Yes. USB drives work great. The only thing, when you delete a file off a flash drive with default formatting, you'll only send it to a hidden "trashes" file. To permanently delete it off the stick, you'll need to push commandshiftdelete.
Hope that helps!

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