It's official, this Friday, August 28th, I am going to have OS X running on my MacBooks. OS X Snow Leopard has been long reported to be arriving in September, but today Apple has announced that it will be shipping out early, and I will be receiving it before September even hits.

I was one of the lucky ones, I was able to get Snow Leopard for less than $10 thanks to my recent MacBook upgrade. You can get it cheap too, as long as you have purchased a new Mac since June 8th of this year. If you have, you are eligible for the cheap upgrade. If you didn't, the good news is that the upgrade will only run $29 per machine or $49 for a family pack. These prices assume that you already have OS X 10.5, Leopard installed on your machine.

So, come this weekend, I am going to have a much improved system. By September 1, I will have gained several GB of hard drive storage, and my machine will be much faster thanks to Snow Leopards ability to leverage my video card for extra processing and new processor friendly optimizations. Also, my Time Machine backups will be faster and I will be running QuickTime X. All in all, my MacBooks is going to feel like an all new machine.

If you have pre-ordered Snow Leopard, you should have it soon. If you haven't, do so quick so that your Intel Mac has a new lease on life.