Lots of my friends have macbooks, and I haven't heard about any problems from them concerning shut-offs (however, I'll be sure to ask them now). They do fret a lot about Microsoft products, particularly the hassles of using our u's microsoft email server to check their email. Apparently, there's a whole sludge of problems with the programs they're using (Eudora, I think?), and emails are getting lost, distorted, and so on. However, I doubt that's Apple's fault--I'm sure the blame is squarely on Microsoft.

With the new iMac, I have noticed that the computer shuts down after three hours. This is a pain because I like to use it to play music while I'm working on other things. However, I'll be damned if I can find out how to get it keep from shutting down. According to my power settings, it should never turn off. But it does. Hmm...

For me, though, the most serious problem is not being able to play any Mac games on my Macintel. I don't have any games for it yet, and apparently most of games intended for the older Macs won't run at all on the new machine. What a freaking disappointment.

I've also heard that the game I was most interested in purchasing (Civilization IV for Mac) is riddled with bugs and crashes just as often and runs more clunkily than it did on the PC, which is saying something. Here I was hoping that it'd run smoothly! Now, I don't care to spend $40 acquiring a glitchy software product.