Well, I’ve had my shiny new Macbook Pro for a little over one week now and I decided that I would share my reactions thus far.  So far I’m loving it. 

Software
The OS, while it does take some getting used to, is pretty amazing.  It looks good, it does what I expect it to (most of the time) and it is easy to learn.  The fact that I can always fall back to the familiar bash console is very reassuring too.  I have software to do pretty much all of the things I would expect to do on another platform (minus the ability to play games, but we’ll cover that in a minute).  Overall I’m really impressed.  I’m waiting on Office 2008 so that I can be on top of the new OpenXML document format from the PC version but other than that, I’m rolling along splendidly with OS X.  Adium eats pidgin for breakfast in terms of completeness which is a real complement because I love gaim/pidgin.  The dashboard is cool too, so much useful stuff all accessible quickly simply by pressing F12.  Quicktime … still sucks ass.  VLC however runs on the mac and is much better than the PC and linux versions in terms of UI uniformity.  Very impressive there.  Firefox and thunderbird still rule my browser and email but, the addition of iCal to my pim lineup is very welcome.  A quick way to see my calendar and to sync it with my phone without having to load up google calendar.

Hardware
The hardware is very impressive.  Core 2 duo 2.4ghz, 4gb of ram, 160gb harddrive.  Everything seems very snappy and I never find myself wondering how long something is going to take.  I still have complaints about the heat and battery life, both of which suck.  The battery life hasn’t had much of an effect on me because I just keep it plugged in most of the time while I’m at home.  The heat on the other hand is very annoying.  smcFanController helps with that a little, I run the fans at 4k constantly to keep the heat situation under control.  If I’m not doing anything to processor sitting it in my lap isn’t a problem, if the CPU usage is high, it isn’t bearable.  In general the pros outweigh the cons I think.  I thought I’d miss right click but, I don’t.  Two fingers+click  or two finger touch pad touch isn’t bad.  I do however miss my middle mouse button!!! How do I open and close tabs without it?!  Oh well, it won’t kill me.

Gaming, Windows
I brought my laptop to a lan last weekend and was totally impressed.  Every game I touched played like an absolute champ.  CS:S (my favorite) was 180fps+.  Finally I own a laptop that isn’t afraid to play games!  Unfortunately, most games require me to boot windows so I set up a bootcamp partition (32gb, probably too big gparted anyone?) and I have the vmware fusion beta booting it as well.  This gives me the flexibility to run windows applications from within OS X (using unity) or to boot into a full-fledged windows to play games.  Definitely cool.

Accessories
Zeroshock Case: A little bigger than the MBP (the 700m case fit PERFECTLY) but, it fits and provides a layer of protection in my backpack against real life.
Invisible Shield: The top shield (on the back side of the screen) was an absolute bitch to get on but, now it looks really good and will definitely help prevent unnecessary scratching of my mbp.  The bottom shields were easier to put on but because it is made of many smaller pieces there are small gaps between where they connect.  The touchpad covering plastic was absolute shit.  I couldn’t move the mouse with it on there so it is in the garbage now.  The palmrest protectors are ugly but I’m keeping them in order to prevent my palmrest from getting discolored.
4gb ram upgrade: Probably totally uncessary but it was cheap so I went for it.
Airport extreme: airport disk + 802.11n = :drool:

Overall
9.5/10
A few issues aside this is definitely the best computer I have ever owned.  Anyone on the edge considering upgrading: do it, you won’t regret it.  Several years ago I told myself I would never buy a mac because they were for total noobs.  Now I can hardly see myself going back.