about competition: duplicate content or park it?

Well I hope you don't go into the white computers niche because there is really a whole lot of competition there. But...
I would use the .com as the main while parking the others if you care that much about protecting your brand.
I am not sure as to NameCheap vs. Godaddy but I use Godaddy and I love them

You're really asking a lot of fairly complicated and not-too-related questions here, and some if them (I think) rest on assumptions which many people aren't going to share, because they don't share your perception of "duplicate content" and its significance in the first place. Don't take it the wrong way, but it seems to me that the more experienced and successful Warriors may actually even be the ones least likely to share your starting-perceptions.

Personally, I don't usually do that.

I often use the .info version as my main site, and when I do that I'll always buy the .com to make sure nobody else does, and forward it to the .info. (I often prefer the .info after doing a big survey of customers on my 8 lists: they felt, overall, that ".info" looks better for an "informational site". Customers quite often think the opposite to what marketers think, actually ).

No, I never use spinning at all. I regard it as nonsensical and without benefit for my business. (I know that not everyone agrees).

Google would certainly be smart enough to see it, for the most part, but that wouldn't matter at all, because for Google's purposes it would be "syndicated content", not "duplicate content" anyway. What do you think happens to all the news sites which have the same news stories every day, syndicated from Associated Press, Reuters, and so on? You surely don't imagine that they're "disadvantaged" in some way?

Just in case of what? :confused:

Namecheap is so preferable for so many other reasons that the price wouldn't much matter to me. (Remember, though, if it matters to you, that GoDaddy does give free privacy with purchases of 5+ domain-names in one transaction and that their .info domain-name prices are about a third of those at Namecheap.)