Aluminum or plastic MacBook?

The plastic models are cheap and tend to peel, crack and the finish tends to discolor, among other things. That wont happen with an aluminum model. Regarding ease of repair, I doubt the material that the mac is made from makes a difference. Perhaps you could find and older macbook pro. Just make sure any mac you purchase comes with the 2 grey disks. Disk 1 OS X, Disk 2 applications and Apple Hardware Test.

In my opinion, you should get a unibody MacBook or a pre-owned MacBook Pro. But if you are only considering a MacBook (and not a Pro/Air), I would say that, even though the latest MacBook model might be a polycarbonate one, the unibody is way more durable and looks a lot better. Regarding performance, you could always upgrade the hard disk and the RAM so that it's faster. I would reccomend upgrading to a 1 TB hard disk (from Samsung; theirs is really good) and 4 GB of RAM (from Strontium/Hynix/Samsung). That way, you would get a cheap MacBook that looks awesome and has good performance. Just check that there are no dents/scratches on your pre-owned MacBook. Good luck! 🙂

The aluminum model is far more durable than any of the plastic models. However, even on the used market, aluminum macbooks are far too overpriced IMO. Check the apple refurb store and go with a base model 13" MBP if you can possibly afford it. I have both a 13" MBP and a black Macbook and can tell you there is simply no comparison in the quality and durability of the machines. If you can get a decent price on an aluminum macbook, I'd go for it. They are a few years old but still have very respectable specs. Upgrade the ram to 8gb and it should be up to pretty much any task.

So far as performance goes, with the exception of the initial release of the MacBook, all MacBooks have had a Core 2 Duo processor. There really is not a significant performance difference from those origianlly released and those that were being made at the time they were discontinued. More important for performance is to have a decent amount of RAM (4GB or more) and a decent hard drive... both of which are easily replaced. There really would be no benefit in going with the plastic version. NOTE: The aluminum unibody MacBook did NOT have a firewire port. So, that might be something to consider in making your decision.

If you want a new refurbished white MacBook the Apple Refurbished store http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macbook has one available today for $849.
It’s covered by Apple's One-Year Limited Warranty and the AppleCare Protection Plan can be purchased.