I spent a bit of time this morning looking through the support forums on Apple.com for feedback on the MacBooks. Other then the occasional defect, there does not seems to be a flood of complaints about quality. A bit early, but it appears that the manufacturing quality is better then on the first batch of MacBook Pros.

Some of the problems: a faint but noticable whining noise, along with "mooing" sounds from the fan firing up regularly. These appear to be common occurances with Apple's laptops.

I also found more comment on the flakey paint story, noting that the unit was a Apple store demo, and that someone may have tried to used paint to touch-up a damaged unit for display. Seems somewhat unlikely, but who knows. Right now, we have one story and a lot of heresay, along with many macBook owners reporting no such problem. Mass production isn't perfect.

I did come across generally positive comments on the screen (from people who apparantly have actually seen it in action). One piece of information I was looking for: according to the tech spec page, the MacBooks support external displays running at up to 1920x1200. More then enough for my needs.

And I still think the new keyboard looks very cool. Reminds me of my first computer, a TRS-80 CoCo!