Well, I have the first gen MBP 1.83 Ghz (the one with the noisy whining fan noise, got it repaired though) , and it's working just swell for me.

It really depends how much you are willing to afford for a Macbook. Although I think Black is cool, I would much prefer having extra cash for Ram which in my opinion is so important when you run multiple programs at once. Uping your ram from 1 gigs to 2 really makes a huge difference in the long run.

Well, if you can afford the extra RM900, then go for it. It is a good deal. But if you find yourself
strapped for cash, then just add some extra ram and you'll be fine. If you don't like it after awhile
you could always sell it on ebay. Apple products seem to retain alot of it's value after a year of usage. Sold my old iBook and I only loss about USD250 off the retail after one year of usage.

This post has been edited by Onso: Apr 19 2007, 04:12 PM

Hey Ronglovelynn,
Sorry to make things extra complicated for you.
The 1.83 Ghz Macbook comes with only 512MB (256MB x 2), so if you were to swap out for more Ram, you would want to get rid of one 256MB or both all together if you were going to add more. If price is an issue, normally you would get a single stick 1GB Ram and you would have an odd total of 1,256MB of memory.
SODIMM Ram stick are sold in large sizes in single sticks, but then they start to cost more and more the higher you go in gigabytes per stick.

And in my honest opinion 512MB of ram is really not large enough ANYTHING to run these days. It takes at least 2Gbs on my MBP and I still crave for more. Thank god for dual cores...seriously I'm a multi-tasking whore.

But then again, as for lack of extra HD space, you could always bring around those mini laptop size external HD, I'd recommend them cause they don't need an extra power cable +brick to lug around, just plugs right into the Firewire port (like thisLaCie).
The same goes with when you want to burn DVDs, just get an external drive. But if you could hold out long enough with CD-Rs, you could probably get an external Blu-Ray burner when it comes out and the price is right.

So yeah, sorry to add all these other things to add to the equation. It does make your decision process a little harder, but the more you know...

If you are going to buy it to go overseas, like to aussie, get it over there. It's much cheaper buying it from an Official Apple store, plus your university could probably entitle you to a 10-15% student discount.