Well, I can confidently report that.....

..... the bugs reported on the apple macbook forum are consistent on this machine too.

I could previously connect an external monitor, now I cannot. Mail *might* have worked before, but now definitely doesn't.

While windows updates have previously altered setting and installed stuff without asking, I've never had an update that broke the machine, despite using distinctly non-standard hardware. Here I am with a 4 day old computer, exactly as the manufacturer made it, and various functions do not work.

I've never been a fanboy for Microsoft, but I have developed a certain admiration for them, even if they make software that is not as intuitive as Apple.

So at some stage soon I'm going to have to call Apple tech support to find out what the fixes are (I shall not be impressed if they consist of scratch re-installation). I went ahead and installed Office this morning, as I'd fiddled about, quite unsuccessfully to get Mail to work yesterday (and account creation is SO tedious for the first time). Entourage recognised my regular mail account settings in seconds.

Ho hum.

Conversely, I have just configured my 3 newly established email accounts in entourage, and it was just completely painless. I really would have been happy to use the apple software as Entourage is somewhat overkill, but it appears that is not to be.

I AM impressed by the >4 hour battery life of this thing! Hope that will last for a while.