When I bought this computer in May 2007 it came with OS 10.4 (Tiger), a 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM and 160GB hard drive. Since then I've upgraded to 10.5 (Leopard) and to 4GB RAM, and although the 160GB was a bit of a limitation (I've been forced to move my downloaded/ripped movie collection to an external HDD), it still runs almost as well as the day I bought it, despite over two years of extremely heavy use.

Despite what people say about Macs being "for the computer illiterate" I'm a computer engineering student who more than knows his way around just about any electronic device, and in my opinion, while Macs are far easier to use, if you're as "computer literate" as people like to claim they are, you can use that knowledge to push OS X beyond the realm of what you might think its limitations are. I run Vista on it regularly either through Boot Camp or VMWare and it runs many recent games almost flawlessly.

As for the physical computer itself, I love the design more than any other computer I've seen. To date, even when Apple showed off the newer MacBooks and MacBook Pros, I loved the new designs, but I still prefer this one. I have a few very small gripes, such as the heat on the bottom of the case which can become unbearable at times running on my lap, and the speaker openings, which seem to trap dust and small crumbs despite the keyboard being relatively easy to clean out with a can of compressed air. In addition, it makes a loud, off-putting mechanical noise whenever you put a disc into the CD/DVD drive, but even my brother's brand new 13-inch MBP makes the same noise, so I guess that's just a trait of Apple's drives.

It's obviously not perfect, but it's the closest thing I've found, and despite over two years of both digital and physical wear-and-tear it just keeps kicking, and I can only hope I get to keep using this computer for years to come.