Gah! Electronics!

I'm not a gadget girl, not by a long shot.  I see the newest, shiniest thing out on the market that all the people are salivating over and I think something like do I need that?  I wouldn't use that and then I don't buy it.  It's actually one of the things I like best about myself.  Obviously, because of the world we live in, there are a few things one needs to be more comfortable/ reachable by others.

• Cell Phone
• Computer + Internet (the better to blog to you, my dears)
• Some kind of music device

I don't know, did I miss anything?  These are my big three, and they don't really cost much at all, except, like in recent months when all needed to be replaced pretty much one after the other.

Exhibit A: The iPod

I mentioned a while back that I needed a new iPod.  My old one was full, and I didn't want to delete anything. As I have had it for about six years, and paid for it with the money earned by selling my CDs (I had a LOT of CDs) this is a justifiable purchase.  As regular readers will recall, I started a smartypig.com savings account, and saved up nearly all I needed to pay for this item before I purchased it.  So really, the iPod is the least of my concerns right now because it's paid for.

Exhibit B: The Computer

My laptop is about four years old, and it's served me well.  I don't need a super-fancy computer, my needs are pretty basic, but I ran into a few problems with this item in the past year.

1. I got a virus.  I got a virus so bad that I had to give my laptop to a friend, and he had to restore it and rebuild it.  Thankfully, I have a friend who can do that and doesn't charge me for it, but it kind of freaked me out.  Then, after the restore, I started having issues with my wireless internet.  My friend had upgraded me to Windows 7, which apparently does not play nicely with the particular laptop I have.  I re-installed drivers, did everything the internet told me to do, and it just would not work right.  BF then bought me a little gadget that you can plug in, and it makes the wireless work!  I was very content with that until...

2. The whole thing just seized.  I installed Skype (one of my best friends lives in Indonesia--long story), and Spotify (as stated above, I enjoy good tunes) and these two programs just overwhelmed my poor machine.  I deleted as much as I could from the hard drive, but to no avail.  Once I reach the point where it takes five minutes+ to open firefox, I go shopping.

3. I bought a new laptop.  I got a good price on a good machine that has all the bells and whistles I desire, plus a few I haven't figured out yet.  Problem is, it was a nearly $600 unexpected expense, and that has sent me into a bit of a budgetary tailspin even though, that's a damn good price for what I got.

Exhibit C: Storage

In an effort to back up my stuff, and keep new laptop from being overloaded, I bought an external harddrive.  "What's that?" you ask, "You didn't already know you should have one of those in case your computer crashes like it did last year?"  Answer: "Yes, damnit, I knew!"  But I hadn't acted.  Buying a storage device is simply not fun, but now I can say awesome things like, "I have a terrabyte of backup space--yeah!"

So in the past month, I have spent approximately $1000 on gadgetry.  The good news, I won't spend anything on gadgets for probably five years.  The bad news is, of course, the outstanding balance on my Amex.  But, silver lining, I took old laptop back to awesome computer-fixing friend, and he will get it ready to sell on to the next person, and I will recoup some of my spending.  And the other good news, is that now that I have two iPods, I can use one in the car, and I won't be burning CDs / listening to the same music all the time i.e. my friends won't have to listen to nothing but Madonna, but they'll still be able to choose to.