Normally I am not one to upgrade computer hardware until it's time but occasionally a system come's along that you just have to have. When the original "icebook" ibook came out I just had to have one and the same thing just happened with the new MacBook. Ill be retiring my perfectly good 2.2ghz polycarbonate MacBook and giving it to a friend for it to provide them many more years of reliable service.Getting my new MacBook was not as easy as I had hoped. After the "official release" I called around to a couple stores and no one had any stock or could provide me any informtion at all about when I could expect to see them in the store. I figured that most stores would have to "reset" the shelves and get the product out in the morning. I stopped into the Lenox Apple store in person shortly after they opened and there was no stock and again no estimate on when I could buy one. Ok this is getting slightly annoying. I called Apple directly no real informaton about stock. They would be glad to place an order for me but they were unable to comment about their store locations inability to provide any information about their stock. I waited until about noon today and started calling around again. I called the Perimeter mall location and they had their stock ready to sell. I called the Lenox location again and asked if they had theirs in yet (they were closer) and they did not yet have anything in. When I informed them that Perimeter had some in I was sarcastically told "go buy it from them then". Hmmm. Unhelpful and rude. How charming.
The Permieter store had the MacBook in stock and ready to go. The transaction took just a few minutes and I was walking back to the car again with my tiny box that cost me $1700 and some change. They were even polite and did not tell me to pound sand or act like I was putting them out by trying to buy something from them like the Lenox mall store. Amazing!!!
I had to forgo the tradition of maxing out the ram on the system as it would have been a 45 minute wait for me to get them to have the officially blessed deciple of Apple pop a new DIMM in for me. I will revisit the ram issue later. While I used every bit of the 4gb in my polycarbonate MacBook with VMware Fusion I will be able to scrape by. My VM's will have to inhabit a little less silicon for now.
I bought this system before there were any demo units out on the tables at the Apple store and was really afraid about being dissapointed once I opened the box. The new MacBook is simply amazing in every way. Its lighter, and has an amazing feel and build quality to it. The screen is amazingly bright and the unit is much smaller than the original polycarbonate design. Essentially the 13 inch MacBook is a "mini" MacBook Pro and reminds me of the old 12 inch Powerbook. The photos on the site don't do the new MacBook justice at all. There is a lot of attention to detail that went into this system. The new glass trackpad and glass screen are amazing. Even the bottom of this machine is now curved better so it fits in your lap more comfortably.
