Unless you have a need for the Air I would not recommend it for personal use. You should go with a MB if your looking for a smaller laptop. It is more expandable, faster, and cheaper than the Air.

It depends on what "personal use" is. Will you be doing anything graphics-intensive (such as lots of video editing)? If so, then the Pro is the best option. Will you need lots of disk space? Then perhaps a base MacBook or an Air with a Time Capsule is in order. If you'll be using it at home most of the time, a base MacBook might be just fine, and is quite a bit cheaper with the same amount of RAM and a faster processor. However, if you'll be traveling a lot, then the Air is a great choice. I've been using one for about 2 weeks now, and every time I pick up my 5.4lb old PC, it feels very heavy by comparison (the PC is roughly the size of a MacBook Pro). If all you'll do is basic Internet, e-mail, personal finance, iTunes, and iPhoto use (or even some basic word processing or simple Numbers use), then the Air should be fine. I'd recommend the $99 external DVD, though. It's much more convenient than using Remote Disc, and it's pretty small and can be tucked away on a shelf the 99% of the time you won't need it.

The scoreboard will tell the tale. I bet they move a ton of these this year. Will be interesting to see how many they sell. -Frankster One http://www.shouldbefree.net/

You describe yourself as just an ordinary Mac user and for that reason i would right away say that the Macbook Air is out of the question. I say that for a few reasons... The Macbook Air is made for a very specific audience, road warriors. It has less power then any other Mac that you can buy, it has a small hard drive, only one USB port and no Firewire, the list goes on. Although it is light weight, it is not practical for the average Mac user to have. That leave your decision between the Macbook Pro, and the Macbook. By saying you are the ordinary Mac user I suspect that you use your Mac almost exclusively for the internet, email, and perhaps a small bit of photo editing. You will not require that much power and so the Macbook would easily be able to handle everything you throw at it. If you enjoy the screen size and have a little bit of extra coin then I would recommend getting a Macbook Pro. I believe that the regular Macbook now comes with 1GB of ram which will be plenty. I have a black core duo Macbook with only 1GB of RAM and I push it to its limits, when running 10 or more applications at once it can get sluggish but overall it can handle just about anything you need to do with it. In the end it comes down to how much you care about screen size and how much money you have to spend. Hope that helped, Thomas

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2GHz Core Duo Black Macbook - 10.5.2 - 16GB iPod Touch - 30GB iPod Video - LaCie Big Disk Extreme+

True, though a MacBook Air is a bit more practical than a Ferrari. In the end, it's going to come down to priorities for the original poster. A Pro might be more than an "ordinary" Mac user needs (unless "ordinary" includes serious video editing), in which case it's down to the MacBook Air and MacBook. For value for the money, the MacBook (base) is the better deal, since it is more expandable, has Firewire, and has a built-in optical drive. For the ultimate in portability, the Air has the edge since it's so light and thin. Both have sufficient processing power for basic tasks. Leopard isn't as bloated as Vista, so having the slowest Mac currently sold isn't much of a hindrance. To me, the biggest hindrance will be the 80GB hard drive, but I suspect that many of the design elements of Air will be incorporated into the rest of the line. The port door design, the multi-touch touchpad, and the LED backlighting are great design elements. At the same time, future Air designs might have a second USB port, Wireless USB, maybe a SIM card slot, more RAM (or expandable RAM), and larger hard drives as technology permits. Perhaps a future version will even incorporate the docking station concept seen in the patent applicaton. Nonetheless, it will always be behind the regular MacBook (and rightfully so, since there is more room inside the MacBook case), but it should be at or near the front of the universe of subnotebooks. The closest Vista/XP subnotebook in concept to the Air is the Lenovo Thinkpad X300. It has more ports, a higher-resolution screen, a replaceable battery, and available internal DVD, but is thicker, weighs about 9 oz more in its full configuration (about an ounce less than the Air in its base configuration), has only the more expensive 64GB SSD available, and relies on a low-voltage processor (albeit one running at 2.0GHz). And, of course, it runs Vista or XP while the Air runs OS X. Something to keep in mind is that the Air isn't for everyone, nor are the base MacBook and MacBook Pro. That's why Apple makes all three. Each has compromises. Choose whichever one best-suited for a) what you will use it for, b) where you will use it, and c) how much you are willing and can afford to spend, and don't look back.

I'd avoid the black MacBook as it seems that you pay $150 for the privilege of getting a black case (you can customize the white MacBook with the same specs as the black one on the website for $150 less than the black one). Agreed, though, that if you can clarify what "ordinary" Mac programs you use most often, and what you have now, we can do a better job of assessing which is best suited for what you need.