Re: MacBook v MacBook Pro
I went with a 17" MBP last November and would never look back. That said, I knew as Jenks has alluded that I would regret not going high-end and wishing I had it. But that's me, I run Parallels and do some PC related video editing and FCP video editing. The MBP works great with it.
All that said, I just had a friend who bought the lowest end white MB on my recommendation (well, I recommended she get a MB - but not the lowest end one). She loves it, and in helping her get it setup I fell in love too.
If you honestly need a general purpose machine and aren't going to be needing extra video oomph or the firewire - then just go with the MB. BUT, I would highly recommend going with the middle-range one - the one with the Superdrive. And definitely up the RAM to 2 GB at minimum (I think that's the MB max - the MBP's can do more...)
You'll be set for a while with that for general purpose computing.
In regards to people's comments about Firewire - you may not have ever used it to date, but once you've got that laptop and you're filling up that hard drive (umm, am I the only one maintaining multi-gigabyte mix archives? - let's just say iTunes is saying I have 83.2 days or 159.86 GB (7,176 songs [mixes and CDs) of tunes right now...) - having the ability to expand using an external firewire drive is almost priceless. After I got the MBP and was sold on Apple - I recently went all-out on my desktop and got the 24" iMac. Because I retired my PC that had 5 various hard drives in it - I bought external firewire enclosures and have a nice set of storage that isn't tied to a computer anymore. So, the firewire does come in handy with that - especially the FW800. FW400 is essentially as fast as USB2.0 (480Mbps) - although people debate the true throughput - you can still run data off USB2/FW400 fine as long as you're not doing video editing.
I would strongly recommend you go the mid-range MB based on what you said your use-case was. If you do ever imagine yourself expanding what you're going to do with your machine - you should consider the MBP, but it sounds like the MB would work well for you. The size of my friends MB at 13" felt perfect. The 17" is awesome, but definitely bulky. The MB seemed like a PDA! :) I want one just because of how beautiful it was - my wife thinks I'm so crazy.
And, another thing to keep in mind - Leopard's set to release in October. Nobody truly knows the final specs - I've heard things like - it runs great on current hardware, and that it hardly takes more oomph. But of course, who knows in the quest to one-up Microsoft and Vista's UI - maybe we'll find it needs a bit more bite?
Definitely wait for the Tuesday, August 7th Apple announcement - maybe new MB's or MBP's will be released with even better specs?
You'll be happy to make the switch either way. And don't be afraid of the Mac. Once you're using it, you'll never look back and wonder why you ever had hesitations.
Good luck.