First experience of using a Macbook Pro. Visiting my son and daughter in law in France, I borrowed her Mac to check email.

I last used a Mac in 1984 when it was called an Apple II. I'd seen Macs in use in our graphics dept at work, but never used one. I found the gesture set has grown somewhat compared to the one button mouse I was used to. I'm now trying to learn all about two and four finger gestures!

The display clarity is intriguing, I'm really curious why M$ hasn't emulated it or even tried to copy it. It looks, to me, so much clearer than my PC, no idea why. The keyboard is just plain different. Sharp edged keys, no relief, maybe even a little wider spaced than I'm used to. This happens to be a US machine, hence more than a few of the keys are misplaced (my UK perspective). I keep hitting \ rather than the return key which seems to indicate .... no, its a double width key, rather than the L shaped key both double width and double height on the other machines I'm used to. No idea at all about the 'F' key symbols. Mmm, at least one is glaringly obvious. Screen brightness. F3 'show the windows'. OK I should have guessed Apple don't mess about with GUI aspects. No page up page down keys though? Just scroll or use the side bars?

The huge mousepad is novel in more ways than one. Stretching, shrinking, text sizing, scrolling, all from a plain piece of Al! I guess it's quite functional. Even has a mouse click, rather than tap, though it seems to require a heck of a push to depress it. Safari seems to do it's job. Wonder if I could get FF on this machine? Lots of apps on the weird bendy bar at the side. All odd names, guess that wouldn't take too much getting used to.

Odd, only a couple of paras typed and my arm is feeling the strain. Wonder what long stretch typists make of the keyboard. Now I'd like to compare this with a desktop keyboard, see if that is any better.

Overall reaction? I'm quite impressed. More by the screen clarity than anything. Still way more than I'm willing to pay for a laptop though.