My current development laptop is showing signs of HDD failure, so I've bit the bullet and ordered a Macbook Pro as a replacement. My work consists of Windows development using a combination of Delphi and Visual Studio, so I'll be running Windows on the Macbook, and am looking for advice on the best way to do this. I intend to use OSX for as much functionality as possible, and hope to only fall back to Windows where necessary.
I have a copy of VMWare Fusion already, and my initial thought is to create a Bootcamp partition for the Windows install, and mount this as a VM using Fusion. I've never used Fusion in this way before, so I'm not sure how well it works. I've only ever used it to run actual virtual machine images.
Also, is there any recommendation for the best Windows version to run on a Macbook Pro. I'm getting the 15" model with the 500GB HDD and 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 processor. I have a MSDN subscription I can utilize to get whatever version would make best use of this hardware.
Finally, I have an existing 19" Dell monitor I would like to be able to utilise as a secondary monitor (approx 6 years old). Should this be possible if I purchase a Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter, and are there any gotchas I should be aware of?
Any other hints/tips/tricks also gratefully received.