Windows user my whole life...

I have Vista installed, and although the BootCamp drivers are quite good, it isnt quite perfect.. mostly in regard to the trackpad. The scrolling is there, as is 2 finger right clicking, but the scrolling is patchy at best, and there is no tap clicking. So short answer... don't install it unless you have to. A good compromise may be to install it using VMWare Fusion or Parallels (try to sample both see if you like one more than the other) and then you can run those Windows apps in a window within OS X, without a reboot.

Zooming in... 2 ways to do that.
1) Press Alt+Apple+8 all at once. Now, while still holding Alt+Apple press the equals sign. That will zoom you in. Press the minus sign to zoom back out, or press Alt+Apple+8 again to take you back to the default.
2) Go into System Preferences by clicking on The Mighty Blue Apple in the upper left corner of the screen. Go to 'Keyboard and Mouse' and check the "Zoom while holding" box. I think that by default CTRL is the key that you hold. All you do then is hold CTRL while scrolling either with the trackpad or a mouse and you will zoom.
2a) While you are in there make sure you have "Use 2 Fingers to Scroll" "Allow Horizontal Scrolling" "Clicking" "Tap using 2 fingers for secondary click" all checked.

Well, not sure what you are talking about minimizing everything in on go... unless you mean something equivalent to 'Show Desktop' on XP. If that is what you are talking about, then press F11. That will reveal your desktop.

Alt Tab equivalent... you can press Apple+Tab, but I actually recommend that you press F9. That tiles all of the open windows and lets you pick the one that you want. You can press F10 to tile all the windows from a given application (think Photoshop).

What will you be studying at Uni? I personally would have recommended against iWork simply because everyone uses Office, and Office 2k4 is alright... but I think that iWork is significantly cheaper and if you are just typing stuff and making presentations, then iWork will get the job done just fine.

If it is just WoW that you are concerned about, then you have nothing to worry about since Blizzard prints their discs for both Windows and OS X. Other game makers are not so friendly, so you will either have to install Windows to play games on (like I and others do) or buy the OS X version if it exists

Im sorry, but ac?

http://www.myfirstmac.com/index.php/mac/categories/C5/
That should help.

zooming in is ctrl+mousewheel
I think these are the defaults for the rest

f12= dashboard
f11= concentrate on the windows of the current app. (Think all your non minimized IM conversations)
f10= "hides" everything so you can see your desktop.

I have f10 and f11 inverted.
Copying and pasting is apple key (comand) +C and apple key +V or right click copy right click paste.

Alt tab is apple key + tab. (Basicaly the apple key replaces the control key)

As far as games go:

WoW and most blizzard games, are to my knowledge hybrid disks, so they'll work as is on your mac. (IDK if there are new universal binaries/patches for older games)

other games youd have to use a VM (Virtual Machine) to emulate another OS (Windows) or use bootcamp to run windows natively (this would require a reboot) and then your laptop would behave as a normal windows lappy.

as far as Vista/XP I currently have no experience with vista, but Id go with XP, just because AFAIK its less of a resource hog, (tho afaik you need vista to run DX10, and the new Nvidia card is capable of that)

I hope this was of some help, Im just a mac newb, so I dont really know of many sites, but google or ask here, the wiser members will be by in no time, and maybe we can both learn something.

Congrats on the mac!

[Edit] Hmm seems like someone has beat me to the punch, much better laid out post too, toldya the forums would come to the rescue.

Yea get rid of iWork. Yes there is MS Office for the Mac, but it is buggy, and the new version just got pushed back again till 2008. You might want to start with OpenOffice or NeoOffice. They are the same thing, but NeoOffice runs in a wrapper to make it run much more like a Mac OS Application, OpenOffice requires X11(Located on your install disc) installed. X11 also is required for a variety of good open source programs other than open office, such as Gimp, Inkscape, Ardour, etc. if you look at other possible software for various tasks, so it may be worth installing, even if you use NeoOffice instead of Open Office. Depends on how much disk space you want Seablade

[Edit]...ignore this and all my posts XD

Office options:

Office 2004 for mac
Neo office (I think thats the name) which is free and compatible with 2007 formats I think.

Right, didn't realize that those keys were blocked off for backlighting, you can go into the System Prefs to change stuff like that up though. I would suggest going into the preference pane for Expose, you should be able to reset those keys back to their expose functions.

Right well, applecare is a warranty, they include the TechTools which helps you check to see if the hardware of your system is operating correctly (also scans the discs for faults and the like), but it is not AntiVirus.

There are two schools of thought on AV for the Mac.
1) Don't bother because there is nothing in the wild right now
2) Better safe than sorry.

I am of the former group, and have had no problems whatsoever.

I wouldn't say Office 2004 is buggy, just slow. it takes forever to load for me, but once its loaded, its pretty fast.

I haven't tried NeoOffice or any other free alternatives yet cause I haven't found the need.

My wife uses Office for Mac and hates it completely. It often crashes, doesn't work for her, or incorrectly formats files she opens. Unfortunatly she hated OpenOffice 1 more(She hasn't tried Open Office 2), so she is sticking with it due to bad memories and because she is in school so most of her teachers use word.

In as far as AV, I am firmly in the latter camp, in as far as I keep one on hand because there is no good reason NOT to, and plenty of reason to have one for the future, but I do not have it constantly scanning. Do NOT TOUCH Norton under ANY circumstances though, there are plenty of reasons NOT to have that one around.

Seablade

Maybe it's because I'm not a heavy Word user or because I'm on a PPC Mac but Word has never given me problems.

And Word seems to open and work pretty quickly on my Aunt's Intel iMac with 1.5 gigs of RAM.

Start using the equation editor more and you will likely see what she is seeing.(Math Teacher)

She is not the only one I have heard this from either, I have heard from a variety of people about various aspects of Word on Mac right now, part of the reason why the next version is so 'awaited' is because it is supposed to fix several of these bugs, but since it isn't coming out till next year there are a few disappointed users.

Seablade

If she needs to get into equations and whatnot a lot I'm surprised you haven't set her up with a variant of TeX.

Apple+Z is the undo equivalent (when in doubt, use apple when ctrl was used in XP)

Apple+Q quits a program, Apple+W closes the window, Apple+H hides the window leaving the program open.

Tex I don't even use. Mainly because I don't have a reason to though.

While it can be nice, there are two problems, ease of use is important when dealing with this, and ease of transfer to another person.

Not the best solution right now in either case to use Tex. I can't even get her to use OO.org anymore and that is easier to learn than Tex, and does a decent job on formatting as I have seen from an engineer friend of mine. Primarily because it looks and acts to much like programming, which she avoids now at all costs(Despite starting in CS before she went to math education

Seablade

I'm curious to know why iWorks is not preferred by some...

Because there are better alternatives, and for free no less

Really no one that I know that has used iWork has been to impressed by it, with the exception of the presentation app I believe. I haven't used it myself primarily because I haven't had a need to. OpenOffice/NeoOffice suits my needs very well.

Seablade