I know that the Internet is largely bereft of opinions on the new MacBook Amateur, so I realize how important it is that I share mine. First thoughts include:

• It’s gorgeous (naturally).
• The keyboard is good, and the spaces between keys is a non-issue.
• The screen is shiny, but reflections haven’t been an issue so far, even when sitting with a light behind my head. And the trade-off is a beautiful, colourful display. In fact I’ve had to reduce the brightness to tone the effect down a little.
• Performance is pretty good so far, but it’s clear that it needs more memory (2GB is in the UPS man’s hands).
• I haven’t run anything too stressful on it yet, but in routine browsing/typing it doesn’t get excessively hot. I’m not sure I’d want to rest it on my dangly bits while playing Quake, however.
• The front edge of the body, roughly where your wrists sit when typing, is a little sharp, so moving your hands around can be uncomfortable (see, I’m not blind to its faults!)
• Something I’d forgotten from the G3 iBook I used to use – where’s the delete key? Not the backspace key that has delete written on it, but the actual delete key. Ah well.

Over the next few days I’ll make notes on the software I install. First up, naturally, is Quicksilver. More has been written on it than I could hope to cover, so I’ll just say that it’s essential, and is reason enough all by itself to use a Mac.