In general, I think the February, 2008 MacBooks and MacBook Pros represent a solid and significant upgrade, and I was pleased (although not surprised) that there were no changes to the form factors of these models, since I somewhat gloomily anticipate that when the case redesign does come, it will incorporate more (or less?) of the thinness obsession that gripped the MacBook Air designers, compromising functionality in service of aesthetics. Sigh. Hope I'm wrong about that.

Anyway, the mild speed bumps and move to 45 nm "Penryn" chip architecture are welcome enhancements, but speed was not a notable defficiency of release any MacIntel laptop, all the way back to the original 1.83 GHz Core Duo models. However, early testing reports indicate that the Penryn chips run significantly cooler than do previous Core Duo and Core 2 Duo mobile Intel CPUs, which is welcome in itself, and also should result in longer battery life, so those factors definitely need to be considered in a purchase decision.

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