I nearly hugged the FedEx guy when he arrived with my new AirBook last week. Based on the number of tatoos he had it’s a good thing I decided not to.

Let’s start with the sleek black packaging. It might only be a $1,800 laptop but the packaging makes you feel like you just ordered a diamond encrusted necklace for your wife. The box is a weighted matt black package with cleverly designed compartments for each of the accessories and booklets. There is a lot to be said for a company that leads design through all of its elements, not just the product.

The AirBook is even thinner than I thought it would be. This was a delightful surprise and a huge change from my current door-stop Dell. Having already had the new iMac and Leopard OS for several months there isn’t much about the guts of the AirBook that surprised me. The touchpad, however, is another wonderful innovation that has been borrowed from the iPhone. Using your fingers only, you can rotate, expand and contract images as if you were working on that cool screen we all fell in love with on Minority Report.

The lack of a CD/DVD drive is also an exciting improvement. In a wireless world you won’t miss this. Just like you never miss your old floppy drive. Installing software via another machine’s disc drive (Mac or PC) is as easy as copying files from a flash drive. If you’re already an iTunes user you’ve probably copied all your old CD’s a long time ago.

The smaller screen and overall tiny size reminded me of my old Sony Vaio slimline. I haven’t been able to find a small laptop that that until now. Small laptops aren’t for everyone though. If you’re traveling a lot then the AirBook is the perfect machine. If you’re working on intense graphics or large format design files you might want to stick to the PowerBook range. With all the hassles of traveling with a laptop as big as my Dell I often ended up leaving it at home when I traveled to conferences and vacations. I doubt I’ll ever leave my AirBook at home again.

Overall, I’m very happy with the AirBook but I still like having my big 24″ iMac screen in my home office for my design work. If you can afford both, they make a truely perfect pair.

Check out Mac Books at Amazon.com