Well I like the look of this! A Sony Playstation2 that's 75% of its original size, and only costs £99. Bargain! Maybe Father Christmas will bring me one...

I discovered that the Apple Store in Leeds were getting their first shipment of new G5 iMacs in today, so I went along to the shop first thing this morning to see one in the flesh. And do you know what? I was distinctly unimpressed. Compared to the G4 iMac, it's just a bit ordinary. I realise that it's damned clever to get all the computer gubbins in that tiny little enclosure, but it just hasn't quite got the same "wow!" factor that the previous two incarnations have had.

However, whilst I was in Leeds, I popped in to one of the multitudinous hi-fi shops and spotted some real things of beauty - KEF Q4 speakers. I already have some KEF speakers which I bought about seven years ago when we lived in Cambridge, but these are just beautiful by comparison. They're quite a bit smaller and slimmer than the ones I've got, and are finished in lovely real wood veneers. My current ones are rosewood, which is nice enough, but it doesn't really match our pale colour scheme in the lounge. These new ones come in a very fetching maple finish. Just the ticket. And there's a very nice matching centre speaker to go with them too. And all for half the price of a G5 iMac.

Maybe I'll get new speakers and an eMac instead....

Well what a tumultuous weekend I've had! I nearly made a costly error - let me explain...

For a while now, I've been debating getting some smaller speakers for my home cinema system in the lounge. My existing ones - which, amongst other things, comprise some rather nice KEF Q35s - are quite sizeable, and do, admittedly, take up quite a bit of space. Mrs Lacey has been "mentioning" the possibility of getting some smaller speakers in order to free up a bit of space.

So over the weekend, I went round to the new hi-fi shop that has just opened up round the corner (what a terrible place for them to put it!). I auditioned three different speaker systems costing £299, £449 and £799 respectively. Each was good for its price, but I still couldn't decide on the best course of action. I managed to convince the manager to let me borrow the £450 set overnight so that I could test them with my amp and DVD player, and see how they sounded in my lounge (which is obviously different from the shop's audition room).

So I brought them home, set them all up (including the rather fetching but very large cherry-finish subwoofer) and proceeded to give them a good hammering with a range of music and films. I had just about convinced myself to get them, when Katey asked for me to put the exisiting speakers back, "just for comparision purposes".

And guess what? There was no comparison. My KEFs blew the new speakers away. Loads more detail, tighter bass, and more refined sound all round. So, I've avoided spending £450 on something I don't need, and managed to convince the wife that although they're big, my speakers really are better. You see, size does matter.

Okay, I'm having having a huge internal conflict here. Let me set the scene...

I really want a new iMac. But my PC is perfectly functional, and it does just about everything I want it to, but it doesn't do it very elegantly. I realise that this is just me being a computer snob, but there we go. The other thing to consider is that if I get a Mac, we will have four computers in our house. Is that really necessary? Mind you, since when have I been bothered about "necessary"?

Help me out. Please?! Leave me your advice using the comments section below!

I've just taken receipt of a couple of very nice miniDV camcorders at work. They're Panasonic NVGS11Bs, they were only £300 each, and they're really rather good. Five years ago I bought some similarly-specced Panasonic camcorders for work and they were £800 and twice the size! It makes me think that maybe I need a camcorder. Maybe if I get a nice new G5 iMac, I'll get a miniDV camera to go with it...