Great machine except for the plastic case.

First, I will say that I love Mac and the Mac OS. I have used them since 1988, and for ten years I had my own Macintosh shareware business.

This was an inexpensive machine which functions extremely well.

The only problem I had with this was the white plastic case. It shows smudges really easily, and after a few months it looked really ugly. I'm not a messy person, but my iBook makes me look like I am a slob. After about six months of use, the case started warping and showing hairline cracks (these are not flow lines from the injection molded plastic). After a little over a year of use, parts of the plastic border around the screen actually started falling off.

While it was still under warranty, I called AppleCare to see if they could do anything about the case. They told me to send it in, but once they had it, they told me that it wouldn't be covered by the warranty and would cost me $600. They said that such problems were always caused by abuse. I have never dropped this laptop, and I always treat it very carefully. I think this problem was caused by an Apple certified repair shop over-tightening the screws when installing a larger hard drive.

My next purchase will be a MacBook Pro with a metal case. The plastic cases are just too flimsy.