I’ve been waiting for the MacBook refresh for a few months now, so I was paying close attention when they were released on Tuesday. I bought one on Friday, and am very happy to be writing this post on my new machine.

About a year ago I bought the new iMac when that line was refreshed. A few months later I bought a eyeTV hybrid so I could use our 24″ iMac as our TV and PVR. But I never hooked it up because we didn’t have an extra computer to use.

Until now.

So I moved my iMac upstairs and pulled down our circa ’94 television and set up my iMac in its place. Took about five minutes and it was up and running. So easy. Now we truly have an integrated entertainment centre, with our TV, music, Internet, photos and homemade movies all on one system. I can use our spare firewire drive for both our Time Machine, as well as our PVR to record our favourite shows (we have still been using a VCR, so we’re slightly behind the times).

Now we have our iMac in our home office and bought a cheap extra monitor to get a little more screen space (my only gripe is that the new Mini DisplayPort adaptor for external monitors wasn’t released to Apple Stores at the same time, so I have to wait before I can hook up the monitor). Bought a wireless Apple keyboard and mouse for the iMac just to round things off.

It’s a big upgrade, but it all seems to be running extremely well. I’m not much of an early adopter and have never had a Mac laptop before, nor more than one computer at a time. Hard to justify the expense, but we’re pleased with the outcome.

I can already tell that my son Ivan will grow up with an entirely different sense of TV and movies than my wife or I did. YouTube, television, DVDs, our home movies… what’s the difference anymore – it all comes through the same box. He doesn’t understand why television can’t play on his timeframe, but on its own schedule. True enough.