I’ll be blogging about my Post-WebnoteHappy-1.0 Experience soon, but I wanted to share my first impressions of the MacBook while they are fresh in my mind.

I was having dinner at Tysons Corner and afterwards I stopped by the Apple Store with my wife. They had a whole table of MacBooks, 6 in all. 3 of them were the white and 3 of them were the black. Since I had never seen a black Mac laptop before, I immediately went over to check it out.

The first thing I did, after looking it over, is close the lid. Not sure why, but I think it is because the thing that amazes me about Mac laptops is the instant-on experience. Then I tried to open it. But I didn’t see the normal button that you press with the PowerBooks. So then I gently tried to open it and it seems like that it has a magnetic latch with no push button. And it was instantly on again! Good.

The keyboard did look a little strange. But it felt fine. The glossy screen is a change but doesn’t seem to make that much difference. I’m used to the non-glossy screen, but I think I could use the glossy just fine. I also picked it up and it seems pretty light (though I am used to carrying around a 17″.)

The black is actually matte – not shiny like the nano. My wife didn’t think it was “as pretty” as my current aluminum PowerBook, but I think it looks good. Maybe because I’m a guy? But then she reminded me that I haven’t seen a piece of Mac hardware that I didn’t like. :)

I downloaded WebnoteHappy to see how it ran. The MacBook is fast! Everything was just silky smooth. Kind of amazing to see so much power in such a small package. I looked later and saw that it had a 2Ghz Core Duo and 512MB RAM. Then for fun, I fired up Photo Booth. My wife was amazed – “there’s a camera in there?” And I pointed to the _tiny_ built-in iSight. It’s barely noticeable which is nice.

All in all, I really like the Black MacBook. It’s $1499 but I think it is a great value if you want a portable Mac. It is fast, loaded with features and has a bigger screen than the old iBook G4s. And if you’re unsure exactly which model to get, then study this wonderful comparison chart of MacBook and MacBook Pros. It’s available after you click “Buy now” on the MacBook page. Apple should really put it on the main product page.