AnandTech put in some pre-production samples of the new Intel quad-core 'Cloverton' chip into their Intel Mac to create a Quad-core Octomac.

It looks like professional desktop workstation (Windows, Linux and OS X) class machines will pack a fair bit of power in the very near future.

Not that anyone else cares :-)

Took delivery of a new 1.8GHz Core Duo MacBook yesterday - copied all my stuff across from my old 600MHz G3 iBook in about 2hrs via crossover cable (if I'd had a firewire lead I could have used the built in migration assistant to move all my stuff over).

The best I can say is that it works exactly the same as my iBook but much much much faster. I just got the cheapest model with no frills - I might see about adding more RAM at a later stage.

The Maglock power-lead is very funky and works as advertised, the slot-load DVD is a nice touch as is the built in iSight and FrontRow Remote - can't see much use for either of these other than taking pictures of the cat when she decides to sit on the keyboard.

The 60Gb disk is almost full - I have about 15Gb free - once I try Parallels for some Virtual Machine goodness that'll be all my space gone. I think I'll probably rationalise my iTunes library - its just a subset of the stuff on my PC anyway.

Battery life seems a little disappointing - the cell seems bigger than the iBook battery but on a full charge I see about 4hrs of life with minimal power management - thats the same as my iBook with a 3 year old battery (which showed 6hrs when it was new).

I'm looking for Intel binaries for my favourite apps - I tend to live in NetNewswire and Safari for the most part with occassional forays into Mail, iTunes, Terminal and iPhoto so there isn't that much I need to track down. My old non-Intel apps work surprisingly well in PowerPC emulation mode - Apple is to be commended for the work they've invested in making a seamless transition across archs and OS's.

I've christened the new machine 'Mr Hoppy' after Ivan Dobskys psychotic space hopper sidekick from Monkey Dust.

Once I'm happy with the transition I'll need to try and unlock my iBook DVD (currently set to the wrong region for NZ) before selling it. Then again it would make an ideal Ubuntu system . . .