MacOS – Use Windows-Only Hardware on Mac

Boot Camp requires a $29 Snow Leopard OS X DVD (not the server DVD) and an external drive. The MacBook Air SuperDrive works excellently with no driver hassle.

Sorry I don't have a list of drivers and steps to make up for the work done on the OS X since I'm a wimp and will pay good money to save an hour or two my time. Apple only bundles the Windows Drivers for it's hardware with the client version of OS X (AFAIK)

I hope if someone else has done the hard work, they post their experience. The official Apple solution is simple and works well.

Since it's an intel chipset on the logic boards and Apple is on the hook officially to provide driver support for Windows 7 - the only possible drawback might be the keyboard layout and Thunderbolt. It's quite new, so I don't have any real great feeling for how well that works under Windows 7.

Even in Mac OS X - thunderbolt doesn't have any direct networking support - just video, storage and target mode at present. Intel and Apple are working together on Thunderbolt and the active cables mean that even if PC decide to implement an optical interface rather than copper - you might not be left out if you need a PC Thunderbolt accessory 6 or 9 months down the road. My crystal ball works so poorly for Apple - I'd hate to try to guess what PC vendors are going to do even if they aren't as notoriously secretive as Apple.

I would have no hesitation to run Windows 7 in emulation - the virtualization is so robust now - you can choose to have unfiltered net access, share an IP, virtualize a router. You can always fall back to BootCamp if needed, but I wouldn't worry about that unless you have specific credible advice from someone that knows your exact workload and style of how much control you need. With minimal learning, you should have VMware or Parallels doing exactly what you desire.