I'm really impressed with the new laptop (and for what it costs, I suppose one should). I was just shy of using the other one for three straight years, but as we speak, the old one is getting a fresh install so Diana can use it. Even at three, it's still a lot easier to use than her newer Vista Dell.
The thing that impressed me immediately is how solid it is. I've picked up and twisted the 13" and 15" models in the store, but I guess I still felt that the 17" just "had" to feel less solid. But it doesn't at all, it feels exactly the same. I give Apple a lot of credit for going to this machined solid block of aluminum. It makes a huge difference.
Also impressive was the migration app that pulls all of your junk over the wire from your old comprooder. It apparently is even smart enough to set the ethernet port to cross-over. Nice. It took a little over an hour to move the 50 gigs worth of junk, and when it was done, everything (mostly) worked as it did before. My browsing history and bookmarks were all there, all of the apps I installed, etc. Even keyboard preferences made it over. It was even smart enough not to copy over older versions of iPhone and such. The only pain was the serial numbers, having to re-enter them for the pro apps, and having to deactivate CS3 before activating it on the new one.
No heat issues at all. Fans idle silently at 2000 rpm, and there are no hot spots. Screen is beautiful. Four-finger swiping to activate Expose is sweet. Parallels screams giving it 2 of the 4 gigs to work with. Keyboard is a huge improvement. The size isn't nearly as troublesome as I worried it might be.
The battery, man, I don't even know what to make of that. I'm running in the better performance mode, using the better video processor, screen at full brightness, keyboard lights on, and it looks like it'll easily do five hours on a single charge. My guess is that you can easily get six or seven if you back off. I know Apple says eight, but honestly, I was hoping for five or more, and that seems easily achievable.
I suppose I'll post more after I use it, but at this point I'm not honestly expecting much to be different than what I've experienced for the last three years.