Sandforce Garbage collection is quite good, I've been running raid0's vertex 2's for more than a year and more recently agility 3's. Never had any big problems with degradation. And if necessary, you could just secure erase and re-image.
Better touchpad, keyboard, and stiffer chassis (at least in my experience). I'm not a mac fanboy by any means, but I haven't found another laptop that has as high quality hardware yet.
They had initially planned to sell it as an engineering/development board but the suppliers (RS and Farnell) wouldn't sell them until CE testing took place.
I noticed the distinct curving too. Lens distortion is worst at the edges of the image circle (and hopefully not bad at all in this situation, most product photography is done with an optically excellent macro lens). The motherboard is placed near the center of the image, so I think the board...