Minor issues at first, but I love it anyway

I orderd my new Macbook immediately after the new revision with the Core 2 Duo was annouced, so I've had about a month to play with it. Other reviewers have done a good job of describing the basics of the machine, so I'll just concentrate on my own impression of the Macbook.

I bought the midrange Macbook (2.0ghz) but upgraded the RAM to 2gb, since I planned on running Parallels, and the cost to upgrade was pretty cheap. Aside from the processor speed increase over the base model, it has a Superdrive which can burn DVDs -- well worth the increase in price, I think.

First off, the size of the machine is great. I wanted a small laptop, having had a 13" IBM Thinkpad previously. It's not too large, yet has enough screen resolution to be usable. The weight (~5.2lbs) is pretty good too, and this is with a full size battery.

The keyboard seems looks rather odd, but after using it extensively, it actually has good feedback and is quite usable. I miss having dedicated page up and page down keys though. Likewise, the touchpad is also very responsive, and the "tap with two fingers" for right click, and two fingers for scrolling, is great; I've becomed so accustomed to them that I instinctively try to do the same motions on all laptops I use.

The Macbook is somewhat sparse in ports, having only 2 USB ports, a Firewire port, Ethernet, audio in/out, and mini-DVI. Bluetooth and wireless are also built-in. I sometimes wish for another USB port, but swapping out devices is not a huge deal when I'm on the road, and at home I have a USB hub.

Video performance is great (I was afraid of the integrated graphics); I can play 1080p trailers without a problem; I can even play two (one on the LCD and another on an external monitor) without any noticeable frame dropping.

Battery life is good; I get between 3:30 and 4 hours in normal usage (web browsing, word processing, listening to iTunes). A bit less than the claimed 6 hours of battery life, but still pretty good.

The OS is great, everything works, yadda yadda you've read stories about switchers before :).

As an aside, I have tried running Parallels, a program that allows you to "emulate" an environment for running Windows (it's not really emulation, but you can think of it as such). Performance of it is very good on the Macbook, and it runs Microsoft Office as fast as I'll ever need it to. It also handles videos pretty well. With Parallels, you have the best of both worlds -- OS X all the time, but the ability to run windows applications when you need to, without rebooting!

Now some issues. First of all, the Macbook does get warm. It's not too bad, and it seems comparable to most laptops with Core 2 Duos in them that I've used in stores. Keyboard gets slightly warm, bottom gets warm, but it's still usable on your lap, and my hands don't sweat (though it's winter here, I might change my mind in the summer). The CPU temperature is around 50C when just browsing the web, and I've gotten it up to about 75C when running intensive computations. The bottom of the Macbook has never exceeded about 32C.

Second, the vertical viewing area is very limited. It's so bad that unless I position the screen just right, colors tend to be washed out. This is worse than my brother's cheap $400 laptop, and I strongly suggest you look at a display in person to determine if it's bad enough to bother you. As an example, note how the colored bars in iTunes are clearly visible at http://picasaweb.google.com/artitj/Macbook/photo#5011133062453077650, but not http://picasaweb.google.com/artitj/Macbook/photo#5011133066748044962.

Third, my Macbook had a louder-than-normal fan initially. It was probably not any louder than a cheap Toshiba/HP/Dell laptop, but it was loud enough to bother me. To Apple's credit, they replaced my fan for free, and I got to experience Apple's service. They overnighted me a box to send it in, had my Macboook for 5 days due to waiting for parts, and then Priority Overnighted it back to me (Fedex picked it up from Apple at 10PM the night before, and it was in my hands at 9:30AM the next day).

Fourth, it scratches very easily. Mine had many many scratches after going through airport security. It might just be that the white casing makes the scratches more noticeable, but it was very bad. I've since gotten an invisibleShield for it.

Fifth, there is what has been called "CPU whine", where you can hear a faint, high-pitched whine in a quiet room. However, I have heard this on my desktop PC and several other laptops, so it's not just isolated to Apple. And it's faint enough not to bother me; I can't hear it normally unless I'm actively listening for it. (The Macbook is whisper quiet in normal usage aside from the faint whine.)

With the exception of the LCD viewing angle, these are all very minor quibbles. I am overall very pleased with the machine, but I wanted to point out all the imperfections just so people had some idea of what to expect.

In conclusion, despite the issues I described above, I love the machine. It's a good size, it has all the features I need and more, OS X is great, and everything works.