I’m really considering getting one of these Babies, especially after finding out the amazing price discount you get when you order as a university student.
So I paid a little visit to the Apple shop in Bristol to try it out (they’ve been refurbished to be more apple-store-like, but still aren’t run by Apple).
It’s a really nice machine. Keys are lovely, Safari and everything else seems to load faster than fast, and I love it’s size.
I wasn’t able to pick-up-and-play with one to properly judge it’s portability, but I am impressed. Apple has managed to pack in an awful lot of pixels into that nice and bright monitor.
I never did like the 12-inch iBook laptops because the resolutions was just too small to get anything done. But I think the MacBook packs in the pixels just right - it’s small enough to be portable, yet the resolution allows you to get things done.
The hope is that Panther or whatever they’re calling it (10.5 in my books) will make multi-tasking much happier on the system. I’d be looking for the system to use the RAM cleverly when spaces comes out, to maintain good performance.
Pricing
The UK University of Bristol price is around £770 inc. VAT (≈$1.4k) for a MacBook 1.8Ghz with 1GB of RAM and three years of Apple Care (with only one year of telephone support, though).
That’s a really good price. However, I am a frugal kind of guy (almost like the rest of Britain).
I’m just going to wait until they bring out revised versions (Core 2 duo?) or new software (OS X 10.5?) before going for it. Otherwise, I’m thinking it’s a bit of a waste.
It’s probably not, but I can’t help but think it! And I’d rather differ the feeling I had when they brought out the Intel iMacs for as long as possible 
Footnote for those in the UK
Guys waiting to become a student in a uni… WAIT!!!! The drop in prices is even greater than the usual student store discount on Apple.com! Phone them up and ask for a quote to check They request proof of status, and a uni email is often good enough.
When I got my quote, he really pushed me for my university. I wonder what sort of discounts you get if you say you are from Oxford? They don’t need proof to give you a quote, so I’d be interested in hearing from someone who wants to give them a try with the same system specs.
I loved both the Macbooks and the Macbook Pro’s when I went to the Apple Store in London. I’m definitely looking to get one of the two when I start Uni next year and student discounts look really good.
I also want to wait for the updated version as Leopard (10.5) should be out by then and having the latest OS is always a plus!
Go on - do it! I got one a couple of months back, and even though it’s spent 3 weeks in the Apple Centre getting the now-famous discolouration problem fixed, I’m still very happy with it. I had to go back to using Windows for those 3 weeks, and hated it.
Eeeh STOP IT GUYS it’s not good to be encouraging a student to spend these amounts!!!
@ James: The student discounts are excellent, but I’m starting to think it’s certainly worth waiting for 10.5 and iLife 07
@ Niall: I’m glad they fix that, hopefully they’ll either solve it or get faster at repairing it. Ooooh I really want one now hehe
Oh and I hope people liked my shorter style of writing - one or two sentences in a paragraph… hopefully it makes for easier reading.
[...] However, as I’ve written before, I don’t think I’m going to part with my cash just yet… I think I’ll be setting a one-mac-per-year maximum [...]