The Genius Bar

Each Apple store has a Genius Bar. It is a place where one can go to ask questions for free. I went into the local Apple store thinking I could obtain and wait for an appointment, but the queue was too long. I then learned I could make a reservation for a date/time over the web, did this, and was able to get answers or preliminary ideas to many questions. Locate your local Apple retail store and you'll see the link. High-level categories of my questions:

• Dual-boot and Parallels.
• Working with and connecting to other computing resources when everything else is using Windows. I need to have some level of compatibility with my customers.
  
• VPN software. Again, compatibility with my customers.
  
• Anti-virus software. These were the only questions where the fellow tried not to laugh or give me the "just how stupid are you?..." look (or at least that is how I felt anyway).