I find that I’m reading quite a bit of your stuff at Mashable. Nice work.

Thanks for sharing your experiences (enjoying your gift guide in another tab) and if you need help with screencasts, feel free to ping. It’s what I do for a living + playing: http://www.youtube.com/torley

Since this is LED backlit display, the lighting should be uniform across the entire screen. With IPS, it should also have the consistent colors and lighting no matter which angle you are looking at the screen. Having said that though, I would still trade “yellow tinge” for “slight darkness”, but neither should be there. Most non IPS monitors have more color variations and lighting unevenness so the average user probably won’t notice these issues.

I am going to try getting replacements for both our i5 and i7s a little later… hopefully the newer batches won’t have these problem. It’s a shame because everything else is working so well! I am already missing the magic mouse that’s been packed up.

Honestly, if my displayport wasn’t borked this thing would be perfect!

Justin, I actually think you make a valid point — I guess what I see happening (and what I think is already happening) is that the netbook “market” as it were is splintering. Sure, you have a very small number of these $200 devices, but most of them are often under-specced at $200 (and by under-specced, I mean they have an 8 GB SSD drive, and frankly, 8 GB doesn’t even offer enough reliable swap for most Linux distros, not to mention running Windows). $280 — $320 is where I see most of them priced, and that’s with your basic N270, 1GB and usually between an 80 — 160GB HD all in varying screen sizes with variable battery life. I’m not saying that those machines aren’t perfectly suitable for taking to class, but as value proposition, they are disappearing, and here’s why: So about two months ago, Grant (my fiance), bought a not a netbook, netbook for just under $400. It’s from Acer and has almost an identical form factor as their 11.6″ netbook line — like, I think it actually might be identical for the keyboard;trackpad. It has an LED backlit screen, mutli-touch touchpad, 250GB HD (which he swapped with a 320 he had for even MORE space), a Core Solo processor (considerably more oomph than an Atom), 2 GB of RAM (which he expanded to 4 for almost nothing), Wireless-N, web cam, the works. It even came with a Vista Home Premium license and free Windows 7 Home upgrade. That machine (that had the better battery, I might add) was seriously about $70 more than the Atom variant that had less RAM, a smaller hard drive, the Atom, Win XP, no LED display and the smaller battery.

It’s not going to be long before Core Solos and Core 2’s (especially the 45nm Core 2s) become cheap enough to put in low-cost, ultra-portable machines. At that point, you see the market splinter into the sub-$200 category that will be dominated by ARM (and even then, I imagine will probably be sold in large part with wireless contracts) and the ~$400 ultra-portable notebook that gives the space/weight advatages of a nebook but can actually run Windows 7 and play back Hulu without choking, plus handle higher-definition streaming video that a netbook can’t even begin to answer.

So yes, I think these lower-cost devices have a place, but I think that the market has shifted to slightly pricier/better performing models rather than going as cheap as possible. And the reason they’ve done that is because I think people have expectations from something that looks like a real computer. When it doesn’t behave that way, they push for more power. That’s why I think Chrome OS devices have to be different. Even if it’s just a marketing difference, it has to be different.

As for Android, that’s for another post — but suffice to say I think the platform has tremendous potential, and in actuality, if anyone is getting it right right now, I think it’s HTC, not Motorola. The Droid might be getting all the love because of the screen and because it is using a faster processor, but I think the Sense UI and the other investments HTC has added to their lineup, especially the Hero/Eris is pretty awesome.

I wouldn’t mind picking your brain on your thoughts with the Android OS as I’ve recently purchased the HTC Hero and love my phone along with the apps on its OS I’m currently using. I’d liked to know the flaws you see in the OS itself and such.

and btw Christina great article and neat pics of pretty apple at flickr

While I did not have issues with the mini display port, my 27″ does have one major, deal breaking flaw. The screen has a very light (but noticeable) yellow tint (or warmer color temperature) starting from the middle to the bottom of the screen. It is difficult to notice at first, but if you are a graphic artist who stares at pixel by pixel everyday… it’s a very different story.

If you can do me a favor, go to this link,

http://tapplox.com/imac-led.html

There are two grey bars on that page created with basic html/css. Color wise they should be identical. But looking closely, on my IPS panel tells me that my iMac display may just well be defective. I am considering to get the 24″ ACD if all the new iMacs are like this.

Nice review, by the way. Nice photos!