Ok buddy here's the deal. The iBook does scratch, however brasso polish will get the scratches out, and even the deep ones will practically dissapear with a little elbow grease.
One thing however I think I should mention is the iBook's brute ruggedness. D*mn, this little guy should have been dead long ago. Just today it got slamed to the floor when my foot got snagged on a hanging iPod cable. It went down hard on metal, and wood, got a few heavy battle scars (later removed by brasso) The iPod cable connector got ripped out and was bent and ruined but the actual usb port on the ibook still looks great and works fine. I let out a scrream of death when this thing fell, and this is coming from a guy that's already banged his 'book around a fair share. This was a hard hit....any other laptop (dell hp ect) would have been history. Not this bad a** little mutha. He's still working wonders, even as we speak (i'm typing this on the iBook in question) Also the screen dosent seem to scratch at all in comparison to most pc brands.
So what I'm saying is if you want a laptop for the long run, the iBook is the way to go.