I have been on the machine nearly non stop since I got it and I can barely even hear the fan. You have to put your ear against the keyboard to hear it. Right now I am running Ableton Live, with Mail, Safari, iChat, Terminal, XCode, and the iPhone Simulator all open… no heat.. no stutter.. zip zero zilch. It is WAY cooler than my EEEPC, extremely cooler than my Compaq and still much cooler than my Macbook Pro and Macbook White.

Here is a shot from the terminal, at usage.

$ sysctl kern.cpu_temp
kern.cpu_temp: 52

Just goes to show it is not just cool, it really is the coolest Macbook yet.

—

EDIT:

3 people have written me to say how much cooler the machine is, and 1 person has commented that it runs hot. I have also heard reports of the machines running cooler from friends who own or work on the 15 inch. (You can see the comment below).

I was and have been running it in the Florida and Southern California heat (although granted.. today is colder).

Under normal load the fan does not even kick on, with the laptop on the rug, or sitting on my lap.

Here is what is running:
MAMP (Apache, MySQL, PHP)
Textmate with 2 projects and 4 additional files
Terminal with 2 windows and 7 tabs
2 Safari windows and 36 tabs playing a movie from Vimeo
1 Firefox window and 9 tabs
iChat with 6 conversations
Skype with 2 conversations
XCode with 3 windows
iPhone Simulator
and Mail.app.

The machine is sitting on my lap, the machine is plugged in and at 100% charge. It’s current temp feels cool to the touch and I can’t even hear the fan turning.

$ sysctl kern.cpu_temp
kern.cpu_temp: 45

The commenter complained about Final Cut and iMovie; You do have to remember, crunching video takes quite a bit of processor grunt, and possibly playing .flv videos from badly optimized or badly written flash players may cause the fan to spin up.

If you have problems with heat issues, or the fan..

What apps are you running?
What is the system load?
Do you have enough ram?
Are you running Universal Binary version of the apps?
Have you checked to see if there is a hung process that is spooling up the cpu?
Do any of your apps have a memory leak?

I am curious to know..

Yes, completely. So I updated the site last night to reflect my feelings on the subject. ;)

Best notebook ever…? Possibly.

Just check out my Macbook Aluminum Review here.

Towards the end of the “Spotlight turns to notebooks” presentation (I was watching on Engadget’s live feed) the store was still out of service, but when I went to the Macbook Info Page it forwarded me to the store and I was able to place an order.

I ordered the model number MB466LL/A. When my order was completed, it was still listed in their database as “Macbook White”, but is now my product is listed as “MB 13.3/2.0/2X1GB/160/SD-USA”. I was wondering why on my order it says that it includes the backlit keyboard, but from what I understand that is only available on the 2.4 model, not the base model.. oh well.. we shall see.. I am sure it comes without.

As soon as I get it, expect some unboxing pictures and an overall review of Apple’s new little guy so stay tuned. :D