Wassup Scotty? Congrats on VCU man. I love this place. I was pretty concerned if I'd be able to stay with mac upon matriculation here as well. I used my old blackbook for most of this first semester, then bought a new 2.4 ghz MB the day they released the new models. LOVE IT. Zero problems whatsoever. The only thing I've needed windows for at all was the dental anatomy tooth morphology CD. I used Parallels on my blackbook, and decided to try out VMWare Fusion this time around. Fusion works 10x better than Parallels did. Both cost about $80, but if you go to Fusion's website you can get a student discount that makes it $40. And yes, you'll need a copy of Windows. I would avoid Vista like the plague. Just sayin'. 😉
As far as whether you need a new mac...depends on how well your old one is doing I guess. My wife needs a computer at home as much as I need one at school, so it was difficult to share & quite easy to persuade her to let me buy a new one, lol. If you are a techno-file at all, you will LOVE the new 2.4's with crazy multi-touch/awesome trackpad and backlit keyboard. Some don't care for the backlit keyboard (I use it daily). If you don't care for the keyboard and can deal with a slightly slower processor you can get the lower end MB for about $300 less. Denticus mentioned Snow Leopard~you could wait for that if you want, it will prolly be out before you start school, or if you want to buy a new mac now it will be easily upgradeable to Snow. Also, 13" is the perfect screen size for me, but if you want to stay with at least a 15" screen like the pro has, you can get a "refurb" last gen MBPro for $1,100-$1,500 these days (cheaper than the 2.4 MB with a couple better features like firewire and a better screen). A refurb from apple is basically new.
Lates.