My Dream Livingroom

Currently my entire entertainment system is based around a five year old G4 and an amp/tuner that I found on a dumpster. For the most part everything works great. I don't have a TV, but I have far fewer boxes, remotes and other garbage that most people have to deal with. I have one remote that manages to do everything I need with about 10 buttons. Pumping digital music through an old tube amp gives it a warm sound I like. Rhapsody + a cd player + iTunes + a bunch of couple of fat internal harddrives I scavanged a few years back totally does the trick.

That said, I'm due for an upgrade, here's the plan:

• Replace aging Mac with a new Mac mini. I'm going to wait until one comes out built on an Intel DualCore chip, like the screaming iMac and MacBook Pro that came out yesterday. I'm hoping Apple has the foresight to include a remote (very likely), otherwise I'll stick with my third party USB/IR solution.

• Get an enormous external harddrive. There's a kind that perfectly sits under the Mac mini and provides additional firewire and USB ports to boot.

• Shell out for a 30" Apple Cinema Display or similar wide format flatscreen monitor. This is long overdue.

• External digital TV box. This may not be necessary, I think that we're only a year or two away from a passable TV on the web solution, but I might not be able to wait. Also will mean I'll have to get some kind of lame expensive cable package that includes a bunch of mindnumbing channels I will hate. Then I'll have to figure out some kind of software DVR solution, don't really know what's out there right now. It's pretty critical that this thing can do FM as well, I'm a morning/weekend NPR addict and going to a website just isn't as satisfying as pressing a big shiny metal button.

• Good looking/sounding replacement for amp. This might just mean building a box for some of the guts of my current system. I think my current tuner/amplifier sounds fine, but the (pink) lights behind the tuner window are starting to go dark and the veneered finish is, well, finished. I really don't want one of those black rectangles that everybody has, maybe I can find something from the 70's.

• Some kind of angled swivel table for my Wacom tablet. I need to be able to swing this out when I want to draw, and tuck it away when I don't. What would be really cool is if somebody would come out with a wireless flatscreen monitor/drawing tablet with a blistering response time.

• All of the above in my Lear jet. And coke! Model/actress/librarians! A gay fashion advisor/masseuse/personal assistant! World peace! Non-corrupt government! Model/actress/librarians!