Questions about New Macbook Pro

1.  I've heard this system gets hot, but is it only when gaming?  I'll mostly be using this for web/chat and photo editing but am wondering if my legs would start to get warm or sweat by using it in say bed.
     1a.  Can you keep the machine on your lap while playing games like World of Warcraft?
     1b.  Do only parts of the laptop get hot, keeping where you place your hand or more importanly wrist(left 'awsd' keys) cool?
2.  How much battery life do you get on average watching a movie(iTunes download or dvd) or just chatting/web?
3. I'd like to say money doesn't matter in this purchase but it does have an effect.  Which are smart upgrades and which are things to stay away from?
     3a.  2.2GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7 or 2.3GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
     3b. 500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm or 128GB Solid State Drive (Yes, I have read about a lot of the current SSD drives failing)
     3c. MacBook Pro 15-inch Hi-Res Glossy Widescreen Display  or MacBook Pro 15-inch Hi-Res Antiglare Widescreen Display
4.  Is it smarter to buy Office and other products with the purchase of this Mac or can they be found for the same/lower price after it arrives?
5.  Do most get the AppleCare Protection Plan?  And if you have used it how good is the service?
6.  Parallels or VMware Fusion?
Sorry for all the questions and/or the long read..  I've done a good bit of looking around for a new laptop and this one keeps popping up as a good choice.  If it wasn't for the machine getting hot I might have already bought it. 
Thanks in advance for all of your help!
Dan

AppleCare is NOT insurance.  Insurance implies coverage with user accidents.  AppleCare does not give this kind of insurance.  It does give you warranty, which means any manufacturer defects it can detect that are not obviously usage, wear and tear.  In addition, it gives you unlimited support for one flat fee for both Apple software issues and hardware issues related to the machine it is bought for.  What this sort of support includes, is diagnosing any issues which may arise with the machine, and repairing any that are manufacturer defects.  Other repairs will be at cost.
To answer your other questions:
2.  How much battery life do you get on average watching a movie(iTunes download or dvd) or just chatting/web?
Movies, the maximum is probably around 2 hours on DVD, 3 to 4 hours from iTunes. The difference is that the DVD requires constant read from the optical drive, and decoding of the movie.  With iTunes it is just the decoding.
3. Solid state drives are still in their infancy, and current documentation says that sensitive information should not be put on them.  The problem is that there is no way to 100% erase the data on them.  Antiglare screens are really the only way to do photography and capture the real color of what you are photographing.  Yes, the glossy gives you truer blacks, but the glare you get offsets that benefit if there is anything beyond ambient light in the room.
4. Office is the same price either way.  You get a demo version of Office when you buy your Mac.  But unless you have a pressing need for 100% compatibility of Office documents, and can deal with the occasional hiccup (I've had none), http://www.neooffice.org/ can handle Excel, Powerpoint, and Word documents without issue.  If you find you can't get what you need from that, then invest in Office.  But at least give Neo Office, and http://docs.google.com/ a change before jumping into more costly versions of Office applications.
6. A great comparison of all the virtualization engines is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_platform_virtual_machines

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