First thing first. This is my third notebook, after a ThinkPad X31(made by IBM, not Lenovo) and a 1st-gen MacBook. And it's also my third Mac, after a 1st-gen G4 Mini and the old MacBook. So I guess I'm not a new user to notebooks and Macs.
My MacBook is the 2.0G model. 2G RAM, 160G HDD (I replace it with a Seagate 320G as soon as I get the computer).
The bottom line is: this is truly a amazing computer. It does everything a computer (or a Mac) should do, and does them in a brilliant way.
The first thing that you will notice when you lay your eyes on a new MacBook is the build-quality. The fit-and-finish is just on a new level. It's better than anything I've see before, including the old MacBook Pro. You can see no screws and seams until you flip it over. It's almost like the whole thing is constructed from a single piece of aluminum (it pretty much is). The tolerance is very small. It basically screams: I'm wonderfully-made and I'm expensive!
The looks and design is typical Apple minimalist approach. As simple as it can be. Sometime even a little too simple. But I have yet to find a major design flaw that's unacceptable. Overall very beautiful indeed. Expect some wows when you show it to someone who has never seen one.
On to performance. Let's get one thing out of the way: 2G RAM is not enough for Leopard. It's like running Tiger on 512M, which sucks. And I'm using 2G now, because DDR3 is still expensive now. Other than that, I'll say its performance is pretty good. I ran some Xbench and SisSoft Sandra (under BootCamp on XP) on it, and it outscored my old MacBook by a huge margin. Around 40%. Considering their CPU frequency is the same 2Ghz, I'm very pleased with what I saw.
The best thing about the new MacBook's performance is probably the 9400M. From what I saw, it's really good for an integrated GPU. I use Aperture on a daily basis, and the new MacBook is just THAT MUCH faster than the old one. It's almost as good as the current iMac 20's 2600XT. Adjustment like exposure and contrast can be changed and viewed smoothly on a 40D largest JPEG, and very good on a RAW. On BootCamp, the gaming 3D performance is also quite decent. I haven't be using a modern desktop for a while now, so the new MacBook's is really an eye-opener for me. Below is a chart for some popular games' performance. And because many games has no frame-rate benchmarking, so I'm just gonna describe what I saw. No AF or AA whatsoever.
Crysis 1280x1024 Low
Barely playble. 10-20 fps I guess, but I did finish the game. So I think it's playable.
Red Alert 3 1280x800 Medium
Smooth. The framerate will drop to around 10 occasionally, but 95% of the time, it's very smooth.
Quake 4 1280x800 Medium
Smooth as silk. Only dropped to lower than 30fps in intense fights.
Doom 3 1280x1024 High
Smooth. Considering it's a rather old game, this is no surprise.
Call of Duty 4 (Mac) 1024x768 Low
Barely playable. COD4 Mac is definitely slower than the WW under Windows. Which is interesting, as they use the same engine.
Call of Duty: World at Wars 800x600 Low
Playable. Maybe not as good as I expected, but playable. I managed to finished the game. And low is not that ugly too.
The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion 1024x768 Medium
Smooth.
Fallout 3 1280x800 Medium
Smooth playable. Very smooth, looks great too.
3DMark 06 12800x800 over 2100
World in Conflict 1280x800 Medium
Playable. In-game enchmark is around 14fps.
The new touchpad is awesome. Those multi-finger gestures really helps. This is the first time that I think touchpad is actually better than trackpoint or mouse in everyday use. Quite a remarkable achievement considering I've using ThinkPad for years, and absolutely love the trackpoint.
One more thing. After I removed the bottom case (nothing went wrong, just for fun), I found something spectacular. From a certain perspective, I think it's more beautiful internally than externally. I'm really surprised. I have disassembled my ThinkPad too, and the ThinkPad is not nearly beautifully made as the new MacBook. Does the beauty translates to better durability or reliability? I don't know. But it's just a wonderful view to look at.
Now that I've used it for 3 months, I think I can write something more in-depth here.
The unibody is very durable. The only scratch I have on it right now is on the bottom of the computer, near the label. So it's a non-issue for me. I expect it to last 2 years and still look 90% new.
There are some minor problems and annoyances through. I'll just list them.
1. The bottom cover is thin, so it's not very rigid. If you turn it over and look sideways, I'm sure you can find some imperfections. The lines are not totally straight. If you press it, it still bends. So Apple still have something to do to strengthen the bottom and top cover. The unibody is very rigid through.
2. The shielding of the headphone jack is not very good. Under some circumstances, USB devices can cause interference, as noise in your headphone. So a good USB hub is strongly recommended here. I use a Belkin myself.
3. The BT and WiFi seem to share a same antenna, or at least the two antennas are very close, in the screen axis. And they seem to generate interference. When I do some copying on my LAN, which are almost 100% load on the WiFi, the BT mouse and keyboard will have problems working. As soon as I finish the copying, those problems are gone.
4. The screen can be flickering sometime. It's rare, but it happens. The solution is just to shut down the LED backlight by turning down the brightness all the way to zero, and then turn it back up. So I guess it's something wrong with the backlights.
5. 2G memory is not enough for Leopard. Period. Especially when you want to use applications like Aperture or VMWare. Then the lack of memory really bogs down the whole system. I think the upgrade to 4G is a must. I'm just waiting for the DDR3 memory to get cheaper.
So, what's the conclusion? The new MacBook is a awesome laptop computer, and a awesome Mac. It's everything you want on a laptop, and nothing you don't want. And the more refined and thinner, lighter unibody makes MacBooks even more attractive than ever. Now I find it's just harder for me to choose a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. And this is in fact the cheapest computer that I ever bought! Yet, it's the best computer I ever used. All in all, highly recommended.
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