Getting Today's Gadgets

Whew! Just went out to look at some new electronics since I haven't really bought anything new in a couple of years. I had that "get me a new toy" itch, and I thought I'd go out and price a few things to see what I could find and afford.

Well, the good news is there's a lot of new stuff out there that I'd love to get. Most of it just for play, and a bit of it could be really useful at home and on the road. The bad news? The shit is stupid expensive!

I wanted to get a smart phone. I'd have to pay at least $100 bucks and sign up for a 2-year contract. At about $60 bucks a month (and that's being cheap) I'd end up paying $1440, $20 activation fee, $100 for the phone - I'm looking at spending at least $1560 total. If I get the phone by itself with no contracts, I could spend anywhere between $350 to $600 bucks. Just for the smart phone. Doesn't sound too smart to me.

Another toy I wanted to look at that would be good for both home and on the road, would be one of those new tablets. No way I'm getting the I-pad. It's too strict about using its own software and its own applications. Good luck trying to get all my Windows shit to work with that i-pad. So that's out. I just saved myself at least $500 bucks.

A few decent tablets start out at around $200 bucks for some very basic stuff. The more fancier ones go up to about $650 and up. Some of them will drop a hundred bucks or so if you sign up for a year's contract with the phone company. I might go for a basic one for about $170 that I can use around the house and anywhere there's wi-fi. It's an Android based tablet, so I'm used to that.

For a long time I'd been wanting a PS3 because I've had a PS2 since the days of disco. I'm still happy with my PS2, and thought the PS3 would be the shit because of all the commercials. Not. I liked the fact it also doubled as a blue-ray dvd player, and somehow that justified my wanting to blow $300 bucks on one.

The first and biggest turnoff about the PS3, though, - it won't play PS2 games now. If you'd bought one when they first came out (for about $600) you might have gotten one that played the PS2 games, but no more. A PS2 runs for about $300 bucks now. Games average at about $60 bucks each. Want more than just the one controller that comes with the game? Another easy $60 bucks or so. The shit just adds up, don't it? (console+controller, extra controller, game = $460)

A friend of mine really put it in perspective yesterday when he said - "Man, for the price of the PS3, you can buy an ipod-touch (around $230) AND a blue-ray DVD player(around $100)." Excellent point.

So I hit the big box stores, everything averaged about the same price except for maybe a couple dollars difference. I was hounded by enough pimply-faced, barely awake sales folks asking me if I'd found everything I needed, then I packed up my shit and came home for the day. Window shopping can be really depressing, but it puts things in perspective.