Let it be known that I do appreciate my MacBook. Sure I spent the months of May to August chanting 'MacBooks suck!' and blaspheming to the CoA faithful, but now that I have a functioning one, well, I recant.

My new chant to CoA members will be: 'ok, MacBooks don't suck, though they do run exceptionally warm...'

If it runs trouble free for the next year, and I receive no more than first degree burns on my thighs should I happen to doze off while my laptop is on my, uh... lap, I will then change my incantation to something less offensive to the CoA flock. I welcome suggestions.

I would also like to point out that at all times every Apple sales and tech support staff I dealt with were genuinely concerned and being as helpful as they could in attempting to solve my MacBook woes. My situation, I believe, is not only due to poor initial engineering of the first generation MacBooks, but also due to a logistics mistake made by one of the Apple tech support who was the first to suggest I send it back for replacement. Unfortunately, he failed to realize, or was not aware of the process for shipping between Canada and the US. I called the Canadian numbers, not sure how I got routed to the US, but regardless, this mishap was the reason for two more trips to the Apple authorized dealer's repair shop. As pointed out in my blog of events, the Apple operator got my shipping information, but then called saying that he could not ship a box over the border and I would have to take it in to the repair shop again. This added a few weeks to the process, and eventually, as I was escalated up and up with the Apple tech support specialists, I finally got someone who knew what needed to be done to get a new machine sent out and the lemon sent back.

Speaking of the repair shop, the Apple technician was also very knowledgeable and concerned about getting my MacBook up and running again. Unfortunately, he simply didn't have much to work with. The thing was an absolute lemon. After long waits for parts to arrive from Apple, he would install them, think the thing was fixed, but soon after would learn that a new component simply broke something else. He got caught in quite a repair / breakdown cycle.

The sales staff at the Apple authorized dealer encouraged me to 'get melodramatic with Apple' to get them to pack it in and send me a new replacement. I finally did during my fourth visit to the repair shop and Apple decided to give me a new one. I had the choice of taking one from the dealer off the shelf or ordering it through the online Apple Store. The technician wisely suggested I do not take one from their shelves since they were all the first generation batch. I decided to order it from the online Apple Store, which was fresh out of stock. This was a good thing, even though it meant another long wait, it ensured I would be getting a second generation machine with all the re-engineered goodness.

All that said, even considering the questionable engineering of the logic board, heat sink, inverter board, etc, on the MacBook, Apple's ability to design elegance and simplicity into complex technology does remain in the forefront. The touch pad with its two finger scrolling feature is brilliant. The keyboard is exceptional and the ultrabright widescreen display is impressive. The magnetic power supply chord has paid for itself in spades and the wireless connectivity is consistent and effortless with my Linksys WRT54GL Wireless-G router. Finally, I am satisfied with my MacBook.