I have had my m1530 for about 6 months now and I've had nothing but good experiences with it. Build quality is very good for a Dell. Screen is excellent, keyboard comfortable. The alloy finish is sweet. Relatively thin and light for a notebook with discrete graphics. The battery life has been surprisingly good. I get on average two hours from the base 6 cell battery, and there is an 8 cell option if you don't mind it protruding from the back. Slot loading dvd burner is good and there is an option for Blueray (something you won't see on a Macbook Pro) and the hdmi out is a very nice thing indeed (and again you won't find that on a Macbook Pro). I really haven't had any problems. I've had several operating systems installed including: Vista Home Premium, Vista Ultimate, Ubuntu 8.10, OS X 10.5.6 (relatively easy to hackintosh), gOS, Windows 7 Beta, and Windows 7 RC. Currently have Windows 7 RC installed and I'm loving it!