Listen up early adopters: That shiny new gadget is not always better
Listen up early adopters, just because a new gadget has been released does not mean your old gadget is no longer good. This can be referred to as being an early adopter, but I also like to refer to is as suffering from shiny gadget syndrome.
Early adopters, I am talking to you, and speaking as a kinda-of sort-of early adopter myself. Although I will say that I am making a valid effort at a recovery.
The thing is new tech does not always mean better tech.
Anyway, in my recent travels I was spending time with a friend who has (and regularly uses) an original Amazon Kindle. Yes I do realize this is not the best example as the Kindle, the original or the Kindle 2 are still not available in Canada, but the item is not as important as the message.
Now getting back to my friend, (and yes it really is a friend and not slang for me) he has the original Kindle which he uses daily and loves. While I was visiting, he mentioned to me that he was planning to get a Kindle 2 “very soon.”
When I asked him why, he could not really give a good answer, but he did mention that it had more available storage. Amazon choose to put 2GB of storage in the Kindle 2, but what my friend failed to realize or consider that while that is a lot more storage than the original Kindle has, the Kindle 2 does not have an SD card slot. To me that is not a perk in favor of the Kindle 2. Not to mention this is all sort of a silly point because he is not even close to filling the available storage on his original Kindle.
Another feature that he mentioned was text to speech, in which again is a silly point because not only does it have a sound like a computer, he has never even listened to a regular audiobook.
Other items that he failed to consider was that the Kindle 2 does not have a user-changeable battery, nor does it come with a nice leather case.
So sure on paper some of the features sound nicer, and it is not hard to argue that the Kindle 2 has a nice look as compared to the original Kindle, but you lose what I would consider perks in the SD card slot, removable battery and lack of included leather case.
Not to mention the cost of ownership, although he is a regular reader I am not sure the amount of books that he has been able to purchase over his time with the device has made it worth the current value, much less the new Kindle 2 cost being factored in.
Now as a recovering early adopter who suffered from shiny gadget syndrome, personally I used to justify (try to offset) the new cost by always meticulously maintaining the old device. In some cases to the point that I probably did not get to enjoy it as much as I could have.
Bottom line, just because your (enter any product name here) is not brand new and no longer the current model does not make it any less usable for you.
In short, use your tech, enjoy your tech and upgrade when you have to, not when a product cycles and the companies advertising gets the better of you.
And yes, I am writing this not only to everyone reading Sync, but also because it is something that I need to drill a little further into my head.
I wish that I had never given up my Motorola Star Tac ! It was the best “cell phone” I ever had.
Although my new Iphone is spectacular in what you can do with it, the Star Tac provided an awesome phone experience.
iPhone’s are the biggest must-have-for-no-reasons ever. I have a cell phone and I have a computer. I don’t need an extra cell-phone computer. That’s like getting one of those three-in-one printers when there’s nothing wrong with your existing printer and scanner. We’re too willing to shell out for convenience when quality of life improvements are actually negligible.
I so totally agree with Mike.
I had to buy a 5 in 1 multifunction printer from Bother Printers only because I didn’t have anything to send fax with. Plus my old Samsung was dying and replacing the laser toner for the old one was getting harder.
This new one had built-in fax and 1 touch copy function. My dad made sooo many photocopies of official paperwork… that we ran out of a High-Yield (3600 pages) toner in less than a month and getting a compatible one for a TN-360 Toner was a nightmare… so ended up getting the original from Bother at $90.00 :((
Correction: Agree with Mike (Another one) :P
As someone in the Sales/Marketing field, I still carry a simply cell phone and a separate handheld Pocket PC – mainly because my employer refuse to join the line and get us Blackberries. I still find my Dell Axim X30 with 64MB of storage very useful especially when I am on the road. It’s basically an extension of the Contacts, Calendar & Task data residing in Outlook on my personal laptop and work desktop. It offers me WiFi connection to the internet as well; I can load up an SD card with music or pictures; it is also bluetooth capably…. What more do I need.
Yes, I have helped friends setup their Blackberries & iPhones and I admit, I am impressed, but not enough to get my own. In fact I’ve been looking at upgrading my Dell Axim that runs Windows Mobile 2003 to an another Pocket PC (HP Ipaq) running Windows Mobile 5 or better.
C.Browne|Toronto