Here's an interesting fun fact we've noticed in the past few months: it's tough to be sad when there's an iMac in the room. Really, there's something about the overall physical design that just exudes happy rays, or something. It's rounded, translucent, and-- perhaps most importantly-- brightly colored. The Bondi blue model gracing the AtAT offices pumps out enough cheer to brighten a sizeable area, maybe fifteen or twenty radial feet. We imagine that one of the new fruit-flavored units might be able to brighten an even larger area. Trust us, it's a nice addition to a room during the blah and dreary winter months. Anyone who tells you that brightly-colored computers are not a real innovation probably hasn't spent much time with them. An iMac already seems cheap, but that $999-$1199 price seems even better when you consider the money you'll save on psychiatric sessions to treat seasonal depression disorder.

The only problem, of course, is that even we can't spend our entire lives in the same room, even if there is an iMac in it. Eventually we've got to leave, and the cold, grey world soon erases any happy influence that the iMac's cheerful coloring might have imprinted on our souls. That's why we're so anxiously awaiting Apple's consumer portable, code-named "P1" and said to be an iMac squished down into a mini-PowerBook form factor. And Apple Insider reports that Apple has finally finished the P1's plastics, and apparently the curvy little numbers will be available in a variety of flavors, just like the current iMacs. Mix and match, trade with your friends! Finally, we'll be able to take the iMac's cheerful energy with us wherever we go. Maybe we'll even get a few so we can choose a color of the day depending on our mood. It's probably the closest we're going to get to our wish for honest-to-goodness Mood iMacs and the like.

We're certainly not surprised by the news that the P1 will come in different colors; heck, even the eMate, the P1's evolutionary ancestor, was available in a variety of bright translucent hues, and anything else in the P1 would be a step backwards. Still, it's nice to have confirmation, even if it's not "official." Now our only challenge is to remain patient while Apple works out the final details; the P1 is expected to ship with the moniker "WebMate" sometime within the next 120 days, with an iMac-style pre-release hypefest announcement sometime this month or next. In meantime, we'll just bask in the glow of this here iMac and only leave the room when absolutely necessary...