I'm thinking about buying a MacBook, but I'm looking at the stupid prices at Apple's UK online store and wondering if there are other UK suppliers that do them cheaper - any UK-based Mac users here that can advise me?

I'm after a lower-end unit, something I can use to properly evaluate working on a Mac but without spending an arm and a leg to do it, and I'd rather get a notebook than a desktop because I don't have one at the moment.

With Vista about to become ubiquitous I've decided that 15 years of staring at Windows is enough for anybody and I'm ready for a change.

Edit: Windows advocacy posts are not necessary. I already know what Windows is like, thank you.

You should be flamed for even considering such a purchase.

Honestly though, right now, given the option of Vista vs. Mac and no XP, I wouldn't even bother. Even Linux is rather sketchy because it's like a 15 year old version of UNIX.

Quote from Forbin :

Even Linux is rather sketchy because it's like a 15 year old version of UNIX.

eh? The Windows NT core, on which Vista is based, was first released in '93, two years before Linux Kernel 1.0 (and Vista is as close to NT as Linux 1.0 is to current distros).

Rather than get into a geeky discussion however, IIRC from my Mac days 'Mac Warehouse' did decent deals on new ones and were a reputable company ... that was a while back though, lol. And they joy of new Macs is that you can run Bootcamp, use XP, and still run LFS

Ooh, ta. Just looked them up and they seem to be considerably cheaper than Apple UK.

I'm not too bothered about running Windows on a Mac at the moment - I've got a Windows desktop box that I can use. But if I do find Mac OS to be a more pleasant way to work I'll be switching to Mac on the desktop too, at which point I probably will want to dual-boot.