First off, this thing is beautiful! As I was opening the package, (which, as a side note, happened to be quite a bit of fun), I was thinking to myself, “Is this thing new?” It is in impeccable condition. The screen is great (and also happens to be the brightest laptop screen I’ve ever seen), the body has absolutely no scratches or dens, even the keyboard looks unused! This guy could have made it sound much better in the item description and still been totally truthful.

As far as Mac OS X, well, that’s been somewhat of a learning curve – more so than I expected. There are simple things that I just can’t seem to figure out, like importing a CD into iTunes. You are supposed to be able to insert a CD, and iTunes should give you the option to import it, but I’m not getting that. Also, it is my understanding that the CD should show up on the desktop and it isn’t. It’s there for about half a second and then disappears. I’m not sure why it’s giving me so many problems, but it’s irritating.

I’m also having problems setting up my email accounts in Mail. I’ve got 1 Gmail and a couple of webmail accounts I’m trying to work with. I want all of them to use IMAP, but for some reason, every time I try to setup the account, it errors out. I’m not sure what is up with that, but it’s really irritating.

As for the hardware, I’m nothing short of amazed. This has to be the solidest feeling notebook I’ve ever held. I love the huge trackpad with the integrated button (whoever thought of that was genius), like I said above the screen is nice, and, of course, who doesn’t love the glowing apple on the lid. The battery life also seems to be pretty good – about 3.5 hours.

I was showing it to my dad last night and I could see the drool start to leak out of the corners of his mouth – ok, not really, but he liked it. I wouldn’t be surprised if, before too long, he gives his Gateway to my sister and buys himself one of these.

Photos coming soon.

The machine comes running Snow Leopard and iLife ’09, but the CD’s are for Leopard and iLife ’08. I will be doing a clean install of Leopard when it gets here and am trying to decide whether or not to buy the $30 upgrade to Snow. It seems I can’t go wrong for $30, but I’ve heard that there is really not that much of a difference. Maybe one of you geeks can give me a push in the right direction.

Better sign off – my little brother is using my laptop to play a game, so I’m writing this post on my sister’s machine and she wants it back.

EDIT: I decided to embed a poll to see what my readers think I should do.

Cheers!

3 days ago on the 15th, Apple introduced the new Mac Mini. Improvements included faster graphics, an thinner and lighter aluminium case with easy memory access, HDMI capabilities, and the capacity for up to 8 gigs of DDR3 ram.

Apple also has increased the base price of this generation from $599 to $699. In my personal opinion that was unnecessary and a bad idea – I just don’t see enough of an upgrade in the specs to merit the extra $100.

I do think that it would have been worth it if the default memory configuration had been upped to 4gb. It’s quite hard to find a new PC (with the exclusion of net books) that has less than 3 gigs of RAM. In fact, my dad just bought a brand new Gateway with 4gb for $400. Now yes, I know that you are going to pay more for what you are getting with Mac, but it still seems to me that an upgrade in that area would have been a good idea.

Apple seems to be using the new look as the biggest drawing card this generation, and I’ll admit, it looks a lot cooler than the previous. However, I still don’t seen the need for the extra price. Yet, as a member on a forum I frequent said…

But you see, America’s thirst for paying more money for smaller things will never be quenched!

It’s amazing how true that is, especially with Mac users.

What do you think of the new Mac Mini. Do the upgrades merit the price?