I have suffered from technolust many times over the years,
and talked about it occasionally here. One reaches a point where one just wants
a new toy to play with, and everything that plugs into something else (or, even
better, connects to Bluetooth) starts looking attractive.
It’s been a rough summer.
The underlying problem a lot of us face—and this is hardly
the worst problem in the world, I realize that, but I don’t think people look
to me to solve the woes of the world, even though they know I could if the
world would just let me (I've got a good brain)—is that everything already works fine. My MacBook is seven
years old. Yes, it’s pokey to start up, but I’ve updated it to the latest OS
and it does everything it's supposed to do. I could replace it with a sleeker, zippier Air, but the cost
benefit analysis doesn’t really work in favor of the switch. A thousand bucks
or so to save five minutes on startup and a couple of ounces in the backpack?
It just doesn’t add up. Come to think of it, I have startup problems at home
with my Mini, and I guess I could just switch everything to one machine to rule
them all, but I can find the five minutes in my busy day to wait until
everything is loaded, at which point speed is not a factor. Speed in computing
probably hasn’t been a factor since the turn of the millennium. I mean, if you
click a button and something happens right away, how much more righter awayer
can it get?
Still, the technolust doesn’t go away, so as a personal
compromise I picked up a Chromebook. Light and small and quite fast, and an admission
that I hardly to anything nowadays that isn’t browser-based, most especially
running tournaments with tabroom. It was dirt cheap during Amazon’s Prime Day
sale, and I could resist. It works fine, although I haven’t put it through
serious paces yet, but then again, what are serious paces? I know that printing
with it requires jumping through all sorts of hoops, but I can just choose not
to print with it. Half of the tournaments we do are already e-ballots, and more
will come. And there’s always a clunker around hooked up to an old laser
printer if the need arises.
I was also lusting after an iPad mini. This is sort of
inexplicable, but again I satisfied it by picking up a Samsung tablet for about
a quarter of the money, which I use mostly for reading books, which is my
primary use for the small form. After all, I read books as a part of my living.
I could have gotten a Kindle, but this does more, like controlling Spotify on
the various Bluetooth speakers scattered around the chez. And reading email. It’s
a good little machine, much more satisfying than the Kindle Fire that I bought
last year, which barely holds a charge for more than a couple of days, which is
unacceptable in this day and age. At least it was cheap, and now it’s totally
dedicated as a music control device.
And yes, Alexa is in the house. With a Dot on the side.
These are most fun for showing off, but having it in the kitchen to play my
podcasts while I cook, and to time things, and keep a shopping list and impress
the in-laws? Why not?
So, yes, I’ve thrown away a bit of money over the summer,
but if I had upgraded to that MacBook I would have thrown away a lot more. Then
again, it’s not how many devices you have, but how you use them that matters.
Now, tell me: isn’t reading about all of this and muttering
to yourself that I have more money than I should and that I should be reading
Peter Singer and giving it all to the starving children on the moon way more
entertaining than contemplating the 2016 election?
We here at Coachean Life aim to please.
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