In fact, the ugly duckling of the family gets three upgrades; a move to the NVIDIA 9400M graphics (inline with the more expensive MacBook offerings), 2Gb of builtin RAM and, at the same time, in comes the 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU (1GHz system). The latter of these enhancements now brings the processing performance of the plastic Mac inline with it’s mid-range cousins.

Hoooray? No, not quite. Whilst the memory upgrade is definitely welcome, Apple are treading the ‘cautious spending’ path (aka cheap). The upgrade still leaves system using tortoise-like 667MHz DDR2 memory rather than the supremely quicker 1,066MHz DDR3 found in the rather flash, new aluminum models.

So, for your money, the standard plastic Mac is pretty much unchanged with a 120GB hdd, 8X Superdrive and rather poor non-lit keyboard. Upgrade options are available - the plastic MacBook can take up to 4GB of memory and pretty decent 320GB hard drive.

Ok, I grumble but, to be fair, it’s actually not a bad deal. Short of completely revamping the plastic Mac (which, ironically, would raise the price that makes it so attractive) there’s not a great deal more Apple can do.

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