[Cedar]

Alright, so I bought my mother a Macbook (2.0ghz C2D 1GB RAM Basic model) and we all know how easy macs are to startup the first time, turn it on, press continue a couple times, and bam, your in. Well, this isnt the case. As soon as I press continue on the "Do you already own a Mac" screen or the Network setup screen, it just sits loading for hours. I let the little bugger sit for around an hour and a half or so, and it was at the same screen with our little friendly pinwheel.

And suggestions? Or should I just take it back and exchange it for a new one.

Sounds to me like the RAM isnt processing right, or the hardrive is dud.

So much for a pleasant suprise for mother for christmas.

Ah well, if this is a dud product, it's the first in many many macs I have used.

Cheers-
-Cedar

[Cold Warrior]

Boot from the macbook's restore DVD and run Disk Utility to verify or repair your hard disk. You should also be able to boot from that DVD, holding down the 'd' key to boot into the hardware test mode, where you'll be able to run automated tests on your hardware. If there's something wrong that the software can't fix, I'd return it. Otherwise, you might try a clean install/restore using the provided DVD.