Acer ugly is understandable, they target at low income buyers. But saying that BenQ S42 is ugly, you have very high standard, and you're not a Malaysian at heart. I find that some Sony and Toshiba notebooks can be uglier than Acer, especially the lower end models, but again, those are targeted at the same crowd as Acer. As to whether a notebook is shit, it is all in the glorious feeling you get when you're using it. I've been on Macs, desktop and notebook, for a good while now, and friend, I don't get that. Some may be enticed by Apple design, but to me it just looks a little bland. It's basically still the same boring design since the iBook days. Where's the innovation in this MacBook you speak of? Of course, the Nvidia 9400M video chip. Is it faster than notebooks with 8600M, such as BenQ S41 that's selling for 2699? No. Is it even close? Hardly. So, have fun with 5-20FPS Crysis framerate. And remember, this is at low to medium setting--mostly low actually, and at a screen size of 800x600.