Almost Too Awesome For Words!

I had been considering buying a Mac for about a year now, but had never quite gotten around to it-fears of an expensive doorstop, the learning curve, etc.
Then Apple came out with the re-design of the iBook, now called MacBook, and featuring the Intel dual core processors, and standard dvd/write drives. That got my attention.
When I finally had $1299 burning a hole in my pocket, I went to my local CompUSA and drooled over them, and drove the salespeople crazy with my hour-long decision-making process (yes, I'm one of those sad souls).
I finally walked out with this particular Mac (the one I'm writing this review from). I've had it for almost 2 months now. I could not be more pleased.
I got home and unpacked this marvelous creature. I've never bought anything packed the way this was: lovingly... As though the people packing them stroke and caress and baby them.
I plugged it in and waited. I finally got around to reading about battery calibration. It's in one of the little books you unpack. It was a bit of annoying work-it requires you to charge fully, run it completely out (not hard to do, since you probably won't want to stop using it) and then recharge/rest it, etc. Probably a good idea to do this as instructed-they know more about the battery than I do.
While waiting for it to charge, I ran out and bought a book about Macs and OS X. I highly recommend this for anyone coming from Windows PCs. Everything has been very quick and easy for me to learn, with a few tips from the book and the on-board help system. If you've ever used Linux, you might be a little better off. It has a slight linux feel to it, without the bugginess that plagues alot of the linux flavors.
It was pretty much ready to go out of the box. I did eventually hunt around and find the firewall, which I highly recommend turning on. I played around endlessly (still am) with my screensaver, wallpaper, and various comfort settings. You can much more easily fiddle with these settings on a Mac than a WinPC.
I also immedietly got my Mac updates. This process is much faster and easier than it is on a WinPC. And I do it by wi-fi. You can select to install what you want and it is quickly done.
So far I've loaded all my music (I moved music to i-tunes on the main PC, burned a disc, and loaded it to this Mac from the disc). I've loaded all my pics (I used an archive disc I burned ages ago and moved them on here via drag'n drop-time consuming but worth it). I moved my movies onto the Mac the same way. I also networked with my laptop and the Mac to move some movies and photos and had no problems. I was very prideful that I actually figured out how to do this! (It was easier from the Mac end though!)
I always hated drag'ndrop on my WinPCs-it almost always missed the folder I aimed for and went somewhere else. On the Mac, I'm in love with dragndrop. I am now the master of moving things anywhere!
I have found that the Mac does everything my other laptop does, but in a prettier,easier,faster, and less complicated way. Don't get me wrong-there are many things I do on my Mac that probably are fairly complex tasks, simply because I'm new and haven't figured out the "easy-mac" way yet. There is a thing called "Automator" which you can instruct to do tasks for you. I will be honest: I have not touched that yet! So I couldn't tell you if it works well or not,although I probably could have used it for some of my mundane tasks.
The only aggravations I've had on the Mac so far:
A problem setting up the browser/networking, so that I would stay connected to the internet. This may actually have been a problem with my wi-fi router, since it fried shortly afterwards. Haven't had the problem since I got a new router.
A problem with a major program (iPhoto and iMovie) freeze up. I was using both programs at the same time, I don't recall what I was doing, and somehow through what I'm sure was newbie error got them frozen. I had to force quit them, and restart. I figured what I was working on was toast, but to my amazement everything was still there when I came back to it! I have never had this problem recur.
And lastly, a problem getting Mail set up for pop-account service. Mail works fine with my dotMac account, and it will receive mail from my other pop-account, but I can't get it to send mail through that pop-account's smtp server. I checked the Apple customer forums and found this is a common problem. It doesn't appear to have any kind of fix or work-around available.
I love the software on the Mac. I went ahead and bought iWorks which is the wordprocessor. I know I could have had OpenOffice for free, but I liked the integration of iWorks with the other programs, like iPhoto,etc. I also love the iWeb program which lets me easily build, edit and publish my own website with blog,photos,movies,etc. I bought the dotMac too, because it integrates so well with the Mac, it gives me storage space and backups on the web, along with an extra email address and website. If you like games, you probably want to buy some for your Mac. It comes with a basic selection: chess,checkers,etc. And yes, you can find popular games available in Mac format, unless you're just too lazy to look for them. I am overly in love with Safari-the browser. I have found the "make text bigger" function in Safari to be an eye saver!
The Macbook seems to work effectively. The battery life is pretty good, I get 3 hours with bluetooth off and wi-fi on. I really never use it without wi-fi on, but I would bet it's close to 5 hours with it off. The polycarbonate shell is clean and beautiful (knock on wood-I haven't dropped it yet) and the screen is very bright. The Macbook like all laptops, can suffer from heating up a bit, although it is still cooler than my other laptop. I highly recommend a cooler pad device for the underside. The keys are fairly comfortable and easy to type with. The trackpad has unique scrolling abilities, but I am still addicted to mice. The Macbook suffers from too few USB ports, but a hub would solve this. The Macbook is very light compared to most laptops, and I only need a light sleeve-type case for it to live in, since I'm not carrying around a bunch of crud like with my WinPC laptop.
The Mac recognized both my old (Concord Eye-Q) and new (Panasonic Lumix) digital cameras with no problems, and uploading photos and video with each was fine too. My Creative Muvo N200 MP3 player hooked up okay too-although the device itself acted a little fishy about this new type of connection. It seemed to be working fine after disconnecting though so no worries. Obviously, PodPeople do have an advantage when it comes to music on the Mac.
Overall I would recommend the Macbook for anyone wanting a nice, lightweight laptop. If you are a creative type, you really shouldn't consider anything but a Mac! I have gone so MacCrazy that I finally even talked my DIEHARD Windows roomate into a Mac when the BigPC finally dies (shouldn't be long now, the warranty just expired).