waning tech lust

Tuesday Jan 8th 2008

Truth: I do not have the tech lust I once did.

I somewhat blame this on the fact I’m far out of the magic 18-to-27 market, but there are others reasons - the largest of them being that I actually think.

Seriously.

Thinking above all else will kill tech lust faster than anything else.

Example 1

I have a Garmin StreetPilot c580 (that’s a GPS receiver just in case you’re new to my blog). There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. It works exactly like it’s supposed to.

Recently I tested a nüvi 250. The screen is the same size but the shape is smaller and flatter.

My initial thought was:

Man.. I could stick double-sided velcro to this and put it right on the center stack instead of on top of the dashboard. Wow!

But then I thought about it further.

The nüvi 250 does not have MSN Direct and the single speaker is very tinny sounding compared to the c580.

I only want one is because of size and where I can place it in my truck.

And the fact I thought of using double-sided velcro on a highly sophisticated piece of technology is just outright stupid.

I won’t be buying it unless it goes ultra-cheap. And by that I mean the sub-$100 range.

Example 2

I wanted Windows Vista to replace my Windows XP because it looked cooler.

But then I read all the problems everyone had with that OS.

And I saw my boss have issues with it on two different computers.

I never bought it. I run XP. It works just fine.

Example 3

After my last digital camera, the Olympus SP-320, got broken by yours truly I realized that I basically never used all the super-duper-pooper features in that cam. And the battery life sucked.

The next cam I bought, which I still have, was the FujiFilm A820. I paid $150 for it. Even when new it was cheap. It runs on 2 plain ol’ AA batteries and has about twice the battery life the SP-320 did.

I’m very happy with it.

And to this day there are those that marvel at the fact I can take pro-quality shots with a $150 camera.

I seriously dig the fact I can stuff it to the pro photo guys who spend thousands of dollars on cams only to take shit photos while mine look way better with a cheap cam. :-)

Example 4

I thought about upgrading my old Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop.

I was going to upgrade the RAM, replace the optical drive and a few other things.

Then I thought about it.

It runs fine and the upgrades wouldn’t improve anything.

I won’t be doing any upgrades. Not necessary.

Example 5

I was thinking about getting a new 32-inch LCD television. At present I only watch movies on my 20.1-inch computer monitor.

I like the flat LCD design because they’re easy to move around.

But it costs 500 bucks for a low-grade one.

After thinking about it, nah. Too much cash just to watch movies.

I still intend on doing a custom projector later for super-huge picture, meaning a cheap InFocus projector that accepts a video signal from a laptop (which I have already) and shoots it onto a 60-dollar screen that can do a 50-inch picture easily.

I’ll get around to doing that sooner or later. :-)

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