The Gadget Guy! - Part Deux
So, why the Gadget Guy post? Well, before I answer that, let me give a little more history and perhaps a glimpse into the dementia known as "gadget-i-tis." There are several manifestations of this disease. In the absolute worst cases, gadgets are the end in themselves and the sufferer bounces from one gadget to the next, almost in a "keeping up with the Joneses" state of mind. These are the ones who must have the latest and greatest, even if there is no appreciable difference between their current device and the new shiny one on the shelf.
Thankfully my case of "gadget-i-tis" is not of this strain. It is usually content with merely learning about the latest and greatest, and taking the opportunity to try out the newest toys as I come into contact with them. As an example, were I to suffer the most acute symptoms, I would absolutely HAVE to have an Apple iPhone. Is it over-hyped? Of course. Does it make better phone calls than my Motorola Q? I doubt it. Is it ridiculously over-priced? Yes it is, even after the price "reduction." Yet it is different...it is new...it has chic appeal. (BTW, I personally feel the same way about the whole iPod family as well, but since I am aware that several of my readers have iPods, I'll reserve my comments to myself.)
No, my particular strain could be called the El Dorado strain (see this definition of El Dorado from Wikipedia: used sometimes as a figure of speech to represent something much sought after that may not even exist, or at least may not ever be found) As such, the El Dorado strain contents itself with the quest for the "perfect" gadget. The "perfect" gadget may not be the same for everyone, but is unique in its mission to meet its owner's needs in a more complete and thorough way than any other previous gadget (whether personally owned or not).
So, what is that "perfect" gadget? Well, here's where the history part comes in. Back in the early 1990's (I know, that's so last century...and yes, they did have computers back then!) I came across an advertisement for a small subnotebook built by Gateway 2000 called the Handbook.
The advertisement was actually a "real size" printout in the middle of a computer magazine (probably PC Magazine or Computer Shopper...back when Shopper was printed on newsprint and was about an inch and a half thick!). I removed the printout and left it around for a few days, pondering the unique computing platform that this ultraportable had to offer. The price was out of my league (hey, I was still in high school and 486 computers were the cutting edge at the time!), so I finally archived that ad in a nondescript manila folder...(where it probably is still sitting today, tucked between other carefully selected articles of computing from a "bygone age.")
I kept my eyes peeled as the years went on. There was the NEC MobilePro, which really was more like the HP Jornada 680 that I ended up with than an actual notebook PC.
There was the ZEOS Contenda. I had spent many hours reading about ZEOS computers and the Contenda looked pretty good. However, I was not in the place to purchase one, so this too passed by me.
Then there was the Toshiba Libretto, to which I took more than a passing fancy, though my daydreams were limited to advertisements and reviews in computer magazines.
When the time came to actually purchase my first computer, I had wandered away from the subnotebooks and ended up with a Gateway laptop, complete with docking station. Aside from a graphics card error that they could never fix for me, the laptop was a good one. They ended up refunding my money after I had a chat with the Better Business Bureau, and I headed a different direction.
This time I picked up a Dell Inspiron 4000, though instead of purchasing it from Dell, I got it off of eBay. It was only a couple of weeks old, and the owner had realized that he wanted something different. So, soon I was the proud owner of a "new" Inspiron, complete with a transfered warranty and a copy of the "birth certificate." (If you don't believe me on that one, I can post it here on Bent Ear.)
The Inspiron was my companion during Air Force tech school at Sheppard AFB in Texas, and I even figured out how to use my cell phone as a dial-up modem so I could check e-mails, etc. It followed me to Shaw AFB in South Carolina and served as my main computer until I built a desktop machine which replaced it.
Fast forward to the present. I still have the Inspiron...(in fact it is sitting on my "kitchen" table as we speak...er...type...er...read, running a distro of Linux called openSUSE 10.3) I also still have the HP Jornada 680 (which, by the way, is sitting next to the Dell on my "kitchen" table.) The Dell's battery is toast, the victim of old age and some neglect. The computer itself doesn't have built in wireless (WiFi), so it cannot really be used as a laptop. Instead, it is simply an extremely low profile desktop computer.
Since, during the last few years, wireless hotspots have sprung up practically everywhere, I was eager to get a device that had wireless capabilites so that I could get on the 'Net at other locations besides my apartment. Batteries are still available for the Inspiron 4000 and I could have purchased a wireless card or adapter for it, but, a Pentium III 800MHz machine with 192MB of RAM and a 10GB hard drive sounds more like money down the drain than a wise investment. (Sorry old girl, I still luv ya!)
One day at work I noticed an old HP laptop sitting on the top shelf of our damage cage. It caught my fancy, so after doing some inquiring about it, I found out that it was a laptop that didn't exist in our inventory, and therefore didn't exist as far as the store was concerned. Well, it just so happened that the next day was my day off, so bright and early the next morning I showed up at work, coffee in hand, to see what that old laptop was all about.
Well, to make a long story a little bit shorter, I did check out that laptop, and it would have worked ok for me, but in the process, I noticed another laptop that was sitting on the top shelf of the damage cage, a little further back than the first one. This was also an HP and as I pulled it down, it dawned on me that I knew the story of this one.
Back in March, I had transferred an open-box HP laptop from another Staples. It was one of the first set that came pre-installed with Windows Vista, and as such, after the introduction period, wasn't available (having been surpassed by the new 2nd quarter laptops that were waiting in the wings). Well, I had a customer that really wanted this laptop, so I decided to transfer this one in, even though it had been opened. The associate on the other end did tell me that it had been opened, but that the customer had decided against it and that it was still factory fresh.
Well, it arrived several days later and we called the customers to let them know it had arrived. I explained why the box had already been opened and we went up to the customer service desk to start it up for them. Much to our surprise, it came to the login screen and showed a guy's name and prompted us for a password. This turned out to be too much for my customers and they respectfully declined to purchase that unit.
It bounced around for a while in our back lockup, and apparently was never keyed to us. So, here was another laptop, neither in our system nor the other store's. It simply did not exist. I was very interested in this laptop. It was an HP Pavilion dv9205us. The case was a two-tone black and silver and sported a big, bright and beautiful 17" LCD screen. It came with 1GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive, and Windows Vista Home Premium.
To shorten this down a little, I ended up purchasing it for a cool $150! Imagine that, a 17" laptop for $150! It would seem there ARE some perks to working retail! A couple of days later we had a good deal on some RAM, so I installed another 512MB for a total of 1.5GB of RAM, and picked up a clearance laptop case for a couple of bucks. So, for under $200 I had a pretty sweet machine (and an early Christmas present).
Now...recall if you will, that my particular fascination with gadgets has tended to center on those that are small and portable. So, what was a sufferer of "gadget-i-tis El Dorado" doing with a 17" laptop? (Any bigger and it'd be the size of an attache case!!!) That was a good question, but how could I argue with all that technology for under two bills?
The apparent solution to my dilemma appeared in the most unusual and unlooked for circumstance. While down with my friend Derek a couple of weeks ago, I was in the process of telling him about my sweet laptop deal. He expressed strong interest in getting a laptop and made sure that I would keep out an eye for any other deals like that.
To be honest, at the time I didn't think much of it, but in the last week or so I realized that I might be able to help Derek and myself (no, I'm not referring to myself in the third person) with a wonderful little solution that I came up with...
Of course, if I did sell my new shiny HP laptop, what would I use to replace it? Do you remember my absence from blogging during November, mostly due to being buried in penguin...I mean...Linux, up to my ears? Well, in doing some research online, I came across what may very well be THE EL DORADO gadget itself! It is built by ASUS, a company of some familiarity to me, as I have used their motherboards in several of the computers I have put together. Its name is the Eee PC.
The Eee PC is a very small ultraportable notebook, about the size of the Gateway 2000 Handbook, but much thinner and of course much more powerful.
It runs an Intel Celeron processor humming along at 900MHz and doesn't have a hard drive. Instead, it has a 4GB solid state drive, similar to the memory that is used in digital cameras. Since there are no moving parts, the machine is very durable. If this were running Windows, I would start laughing hysterically at the occurrence of "Celeron" and "900MHz" in the same sentence. However, the beauty of this thing is that IT RUNS LINUX NATIVELY! And very quickly at that! It has built in wireless and a host of open source software that makes this more featured than a full notebook computer from any major retailer.
I won't bore you any longer with computer terminology or the mundane specifications of this little gem. After calling Derek, it looks like he is very willing to purchase my HP laptop. He'll be saving about $400 dollars from what he would have to pay for my computer on Amazon, and I'll be making about $400 on the whole deal. This will get me the Eee PC and I'll have some extra left over. (And yes I've explained to Derek about why I'm changing computers and the cost differences). So...it looks like I may have Christmas yet again...possibly some time in February!!!
DISCLAIMER: I REALIZE THAT THIS IS PROBABLY THE LONGEST BLOG POST THAT YOU HAVE EVER READ. I UNFORTUNATELY CANNOT MAKE ANY REFUNDS AS TO THE 5-10 MINUTES YOU MIGHT HAVE SPENT IN READING THIS. HOWEVER, THANKS FOR YOUR INTEREST AND YOU CAN DEFINITELY FEEL UP TO DATE WITH SOME OF THE LATEST HAPPENINGS IN MY LIFE.
Thankfully my case of "gadget-i-tis" is not of this strain. It is usually content with merely learning about the latest and greatest, and taking the opportunity to try out the newest toys as I come into contact with them. As an example, were I to suffer the most acute symptoms, I would absolutely HAVE to have an Apple iPhone. Is it over-hyped? Of course. Does it make better phone calls than my Motorola Q? I doubt it. Is it ridiculously over-priced? Yes it is, even after the price "reduction." Yet it is different...it is new...it has chic appeal. (BTW, I personally feel the same way about the whole iPod family as well, but since I am aware that several of my readers have iPods, I'll reserve my comments to myself.)
No, my particular strain could be called the El Dorado strain (see this definition of El Dorado from Wikipedia: used sometimes as a figure of speech to represent something much sought after that may not even exist, or at least may not ever be found) As such, the El Dorado strain contents itself with the quest for the "perfect" gadget. The "perfect" gadget may not be the same for everyone, but is unique in its mission to meet its owner's needs in a more complete and thorough way than any other previous gadget (whether personally owned or not).
So, what is that "perfect" gadget? Well, here's where the history part comes in. Back in the early 1990's (I know, that's so last century...and yes, they did have computers back then!) I came across an advertisement for a small subnotebook built by Gateway 2000 called the Handbook.
The advertisement was actually a "real size" printout in the middle of a computer magazine (probably PC Magazine or Computer Shopper...back when Shopper was printed on newsprint and was about an inch and a half thick!). I removed the printout and left it around for a few days, pondering the unique computing platform that this ultraportable had to offer. The price was out of my league (hey, I was still in high school and 486 computers were the cutting edge at the time!), so I finally archived that ad in a nondescript manila folder...(where it probably is still sitting today, tucked between other carefully selected articles of computing from a "bygone age.")
I kept my eyes peeled as the years went on. There was the NEC MobilePro, which really was more like the HP Jornada 680 that I ended up with than an actual notebook PC.
There was the ZEOS Contenda. I had spent many hours reading about ZEOS computers and the Contenda looked pretty good. However, I was not in the place to purchase one, so this too passed by me.
When the time came to actually purchase my first computer, I had wandered away from the subnotebooks and ended up with a Gateway laptop, complete with docking station. Aside from a graphics card error that they could never fix for me, the laptop was a good one. They ended up refunding my money after I had a chat with the Better Business Bureau, and I headed a different direction.
This time I picked up a Dell Inspiron 4000, though instead of purchasing it from Dell, I got it off of eBay. It was only a couple of weeks old, and the owner had realized that he wanted something different. So, soon I was the proud owner of a "new" Inspiron, complete with a transfered warranty and a copy of the "birth certificate." (If you don't believe me on that one, I can post it here on Bent Ear.)
The Inspiron was my companion during Air Force tech school at Sheppard AFB in Texas, and I even figured out how to use my cell phone as a dial-up modem so I could check e-mails, etc. It followed me to Shaw AFB in South Carolina and served as my main computer until I built a desktop machine which replaced it.
Fast forward to the present. I still have the Inspiron...(in fact it is sitting on my "kitchen" table as we speak...er...type...er...read, running a distro of Linux called openSUSE 10.3) I also still have the HP Jornada 680 (which, by the way, is sitting next to the Dell on my "kitchen" table.) The Dell's battery is toast, the victim of old age and some neglect. The computer itself doesn't have built in wireless (WiFi), so it cannot really be used as a laptop. Instead, it is simply an extremely low profile desktop computer.
Since, during the last few years, wireless hotspots have sprung up practically everywhere, I was eager to get a device that had wireless capabilites so that I could get on the 'Net at other locations besides my apartment. Batteries are still available for the Inspiron 4000 and I could have purchased a wireless card or adapter for it, but, a Pentium III 800MHz machine with 192MB of RAM and a 10GB hard drive sounds more like money down the drain than a wise investment. (Sorry old girl, I still luv ya!)
One day at work I noticed an old HP laptop sitting on the top shelf of our damage cage. It caught my fancy, so after doing some inquiring about it, I found out that it was a laptop that didn't exist in our inventory, and therefore didn't exist as far as the store was concerned. Well, it just so happened that the next day was my day off, so bright and early the next morning I showed up at work, coffee in hand, to see what that old laptop was all about.
Well, to make a long story a little bit shorter, I did check out that laptop, and it would have worked ok for me, but in the process, I noticed another laptop that was sitting on the top shelf of the damage cage, a little further back than the first one. This was also an HP and as I pulled it down, it dawned on me that I knew the story of this one.
Back in March, I had transferred an open-box HP laptop from another Staples. It was one of the first set that came pre-installed with Windows Vista, and as such, after the introduction period, wasn't available (having been surpassed by the new 2nd quarter laptops that were waiting in the wings). Well, I had a customer that really wanted this laptop, so I decided to transfer this one in, even though it had been opened. The associate on the other end did tell me that it had been opened, but that the customer had decided against it and that it was still factory fresh.
Well, it arrived several days later and we called the customers to let them know it had arrived. I explained why the box had already been opened and we went up to the customer service desk to start it up for them. Much to our surprise, it came to the login screen and showed a guy's name and prompted us for a password. This turned out to be too much for my customers and they respectfully declined to purchase that unit.
It bounced around for a while in our back lockup, and apparently was never keyed to us. So, here was another laptop, neither in our system nor the other store's. It simply did not exist. I was very interested in this laptop. It was an HP Pavilion dv9205us. The case was a two-tone black and silver and sported a big, bright and beautiful 17" LCD screen. It came with 1GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive, and Windows Vista Home Premium.
To shorten this down a little, I ended up purchasing it for a cool $150! Imagine that, a 17" laptop for $150! It would seem there ARE some perks to working retail! A couple of days later we had a good deal on some RAM, so I installed another 512MB for a total of 1.5GB of RAM, and picked up a clearance laptop case for a couple of bucks. So, for under $200 I had a pretty sweet machine (and an early Christmas present).
Now...recall if you will, that my particular fascination with gadgets has tended to center on those that are small and portable. So, what was a sufferer of "gadget-i-tis El Dorado" doing with a 17" laptop? (Any bigger and it'd be the size of an attache case!!!) That was a good question, but how could I argue with all that technology for under two bills?
The apparent solution to my dilemma appeared in the most unusual and unlooked for circumstance. While down with my friend Derek a couple of weeks ago, I was in the process of telling him about my sweet laptop deal. He expressed strong interest in getting a laptop and made sure that I would keep out an eye for any other deals like that.
To be honest, at the time I didn't think much of it, but in the last week or so I realized that I might be able to help Derek and myself (no, I'm not referring to myself in the third person) with a wonderful little solution that I came up with...
Of course, if I did sell my new shiny HP laptop, what would I use to replace it? Do you remember my absence from blogging during November, mostly due to being buried in penguin...I mean...Linux, up to my ears? Well, in doing some research online, I came across what may very well be THE EL DORADO gadget itself! It is built by ASUS, a company of some familiarity to me, as I have used their motherboards in several of the computers I have put together. Its name is the Eee PC.
It runs an Intel Celeron processor humming along at 900MHz and doesn't have a hard drive. Instead, it has a 4GB solid state drive, similar to the memory that is used in digital cameras. Since there are no moving parts, the machine is very durable. If this were running Windows, I would start laughing hysterically at the occurrence of "Celeron" and "900MHz" in the same sentence. However, the beauty of this thing is that IT RUNS LINUX NATIVELY! And very quickly at that! It has built in wireless and a host of open source software that makes this more featured than a full notebook computer from any major retailer.
I won't bore you any longer with computer terminology or the mundane specifications of this little gem. After calling Derek, it looks like he is very willing to purchase my HP laptop. He'll be saving about $400 dollars from what he would have to pay for my computer on Amazon, and I'll be making about $400 on the whole deal. This will get me the Eee PC and I'll have some extra left over. (And yes I've explained to Derek about why I'm changing computers and the cost differences). So...it looks like I may have Christmas yet again...possibly some time in February!!!
DISCLAIMER: I REALIZE THAT THIS IS PROBABLY THE LONGEST BLOG POST THAT YOU HAVE EVER READ. I UNFORTUNATELY CANNOT MAKE ANY REFUNDS AS TO THE 5-10 MINUTES YOU MIGHT HAVE SPENT IN READING THIS. HOWEVER, THANKS FOR YOUR INTEREST AND YOU CAN DEFINITELY FEEL UP TO DATE WITH SOME OF THE LATEST HAPPENINGS IN MY LIFE.
posted by Derek Linder at 12:57 AM
3 Comments:
Well, I used to have a teletype! That was a nice gadget...till my dad took it to the dump!
Just as men will never fully understand why women cry. We will never fully understand mens fascination with "gadgets"! I'm sure glad we have them though....men that is :)
It took me fourteen mouse scrolls to get to the bottom of this post (I did read it on a previous visit)! It's nice you got something you really wanted in the end. :)
Post a Comment
<< Home