Your question on creating a dual-boot Mac got me into research mode. It turns out that Macs ship with a utility called "Boot Camp Assistant" that allows you to set up a Windows partition for dual boot!
They say a new Mac with SSD drive can complete the effort in less than 20 minutes, including installing the Windows drivers. Pretty cool!
This article tells you how to install Windows 7 on a Mac as a dual-boot OS (my recommendation because I hate Windows 8). But there is also a link early in the article that tells you how to install Windows 8, if that is what you want. Here it is: