Hello,
Thank you very much for all the information!  I actually found a slightly older, Lion OS, Macbook Pro for $1299 today (- warranty).  Frys sold me their in store 3 year warranty, however, isn't Apple-Care/Warranty better and more helpful, even if it costs about an extra $100-$150?

Has anyone ever had Apple replace their laptop if it couldn't be fixed?

It has an i7-quad core: 2.3 ghz up to 3.3 ghz with turbo boost
500 gb hard drive
Nvidia GT 650 M - 512 mb discrete graphics card
4 gb of ram.

I would hope to upgrade it to a 1 tb hard drive, with possibly 8 gb of ram, if it seems necessary. 
A dual boot system with Windows 7 and Apple, hopefully will work well.

Can Apple computers, accept almost any hardware, ie: hard drives/ram etc, or do the parts have to be Mac certified so it might cost more to upgrade than with a PC?

I'm sure this graphics card is not recommended for Adobe Premier, but maybe it would suit my needs for Photoshop/ArcGIS.  I'll have to see if it's Open GL, I think ArcGIS prefers that as well.

Can a file system, with folders be directly copied from a Windows PC, to install on a Windows Partition on an Apple?  Will Windows running on a Mac, operate exactly how, Windows operates on a PC, or could there be technical difficulties, and perhaps program errors?

This is what I need to find out.  Does anyone have experience with transferring files, programs, possibly older hardware to Windows on an Apple?

Thank you!!
Jan