NEED NEW TECHY STUFF?
June 10th 2010 00:00
10.1 inch (screen) netbook
So do I, brother. I need a new techy stuff too.
Well, I’m not the kind of guy who would rush to get an Ipad. But hey, there’re a slew of new amazing toys out there and I want to get my hands on a number of them!
Oh wait, there’s this uncertainty in the world economy and while spending helps spur economic recovery, it is never good to be profligate. Still, you are not really being wasteful if you really need what you are spending for, right?
Er, well… maybe not if, what you” think” you “really need” is not something you already have a couple of pairs of, and those couple of pairs that you own dates back to 1900 B.C.
But, if there are just four (4) of you in the family (worse, if there’s only you in the “family”) and you already have two desk top computers, 6 laptops (of all screen sizes and maybe even brands) and they all continue to work perfectly and you still think you “really need” a netbook or an Ipad then…
Of course, you’ll say: “Ha! And how many smart phones and other sort of electronic junks did you think you own, and aren’t they all still working too?”
Ok, truce! This post is not about “not-buying-anything-anymore- because-you-already-have-them ” kind of blah. This is about buying what you “really need” and maybe even buying it at the right price!
Admittedly, I am guilty as well on the charges about computers and cellular phones (though I sometimes wonder if my desktop has not really predated the dinosaurs). But I try not to be wasteful, you know. Sometimes, I give away the stuffs that still work to a few unlucky ones who still don’t have them. Aherm! service to humanity, that kind of thing.
Back to the topic. For the longest time, I thought I needed a netbook (I thought I needed an Iphone too, but that’s another story). But I didn’t want to be decadent, right? So, I tempered my desires and waited, and waited, and waited… until a friend (who I like to believe is less disciplined than I am) decided to buy a netbook!
And at a time when all the netbooks were coming out with 512MB RAM, he chose one that can be upgraded to 2GB and upgraded it before leaving the store.
It was the wrong brand, for me. I wanted an 8 inch screen so I can justify getting a smaller laptop (the last I bought has 12.1inch screen). He bought a 10.
There were a few more small details that I don’t like about his netbook - including the fact that he already bought one and I still haven’t ( though I like the 2GB upgrade), but in just a few months he came up to me offering to sell the same netbook at 56% discount!
Dang! Something must be wrong with the unit. I was probably right to dislike it. But at 56 percent discount, it was rather tempting. I was scouring the computer shops for a discount that is anywhere near 30 percent on the unit that I want and I couldn’t find any.
My friend assured me that his netbook still works perfectly well. He loaned it to me for a few days, and to further sweeten the deal, he threw in a 250GB hard disk drive for my desktop and a licensed OS for the netbook. That’s worth about $150.00US around here. Really sweet!
But that’s just half of the point I am trying to make here. The real clincher is the fact that the netbook, which is: so much lighter than my 12.1 laptop, occupies far less space in my backpack, eats less energy and has three times (3x) more battery life (unplugged), can do almost practically everything that I want it to do - except play a DVD. I have to buy an external drive for that.
What about the laptop? I am using it to save energy at home. You know, they eat less energy than desktops. And what, the desktop with a brand new drive? Well, that’s for when we are not feeling particularly scrimpy on power usage – like when you want to drive a sports car with a lot of power under the hood – an urge which is not there all the time.
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