Buy ‘behind the curve’ and save a bundle

Despite my near-permanent aversion to the offerings of most modern television, cable and otherwise, I am not a total Luddite.

I really love all the neato-cool electronic gizmos and gadgets that are out there.

I don’t own very many, however, due to the exorbitant price tags most come with combined with a very short useful life before being banished to permanent obsolescence.

So when I do plan on taking the plunge, I do a lot of research first.

As much as I like electronic gizmos, I don’t really like owning one (read: being irrevocably fettered forevermore by one) unless I can clearly see and expect to actually enjoy the benefits of owning one of whatever it is.

So, to date, I don’t own a cell phone. I’ve owned two in the past, and rather than make my life easier, they have just had a tendency to drain my checkbook while ringing at the most inconvenient and embarrassing times, usually over trivial matters.

And, the cell phone had a tendency to get me yelled at when I didn’t return my voice mail, despite an outgoing message that began with, “You have reached the least reliable way of leaving me a message. If what you have to say is important and you wish me to hear it in a timely fashion and have your phone call returned, please hang up and dial (my home land line phone number)...”

Mind you, I never gave out my cell number, unless it was an emergency. And that always came with: “Don’t expect me to answer this phone ever again unless I’m expecting a call. It’s usually turned off. This phone is for emergencies, and for my convenience, not anyone else’s.”

No one believed me. Or they didn’t listen.

And, after a while, for the second time, I got tired of both paying for and ‘paying’ for having a cell phone, so it went, and hasn’t returned.

Recently, I decided I wanted an MP3 player. I’ve waited for them to come down in price, and for all the bugs to get worked out. I also wanted one that is a little more than just a tiny, portable jukebox.

When I decided to buy a new digital camera, I saw all the great stuff out there, and quickly determined my tastes were more refined than my checkbook. However, I discovered that if one is willing to do a bit of research on the Web and time the purchase right, one can find some really great deals on last season’s top of the line products, often for less than this season’s middle or lower end products.

Last summer, I bought my single lens reflex “semi-professional” digital camera, with shipping included, for less than the average cheap digital snapshot camera costs at Circuit City. A year later, with its 12x optical zoom and high mega pixel capability, it’s still better than most cameras on the market at two and three times the price I paid.

My new MP3 player is an off-brand model. I did a ton of hunting, and this MP3 player accepts a “Secure Digital” media card for additional storage, which happens to be the same memory format my camera uses. The player can be used as a flash drive for data storage, always useful to have in the news biz, and since the cards interchange with my camera, there’s a built-in way to transfer data and the flash player will act as a card reader with any computer equipped with a USB port. There’s a voice recorder, something I decided was a must. I already have one, but the MP3 player will allow me to download the files onto my computer for archiving, later use, or whatever.

And lastly, there’s an fm radio. That was totally a whim, but as long as I’ve got all that other stuff, I figured I might as well go for it all. It could come in handy sometime.

The tendency to gang up devices and use into one unit is all the rage. Camera phones, though poor picture quality is the norm, are still neat. I’ve often thought if I’d had a camera phone, I might not have become so short-tempered with my cellular.

The latest thing, I hear, is for cell phones to be MP3 players too. Make sense I suppose.

But I’m still not getting one until they come up with a way for it to answer itself.

(Originally published in The Easton News, October 19, 2006)