The Static Page

Resisting the Lure

I went to the large monthly computer market that runs in my area last weekend. You've probably been to one of these, or heard of them. Most vendors sell new stuff, often the cheap, bargain-basement stuff from Taiwan or China. Which means brands you've probably never heard of for modems and ethernet hubs, but curiously, brand name motherboards, like Gigabyte and Aopen. Vendors tend to specialize somewhat. Someone selling hard drives will usually sell CD-Rs, memory and video cards, but rarely software. Someone selling motherboards will also sell CPUs and usually cases, but few cables. There is also unusual and rare items that are unlikely to be around next month. Specific second hand network cards, for instance. Or a Japanese keyboard. This puts the pressure on, if you see something you could use. It is easy to spend a lot of money.

Most of the time, I don't buy anything. It's usually enough to see what is current. The other deterent, of course, is the inevitable task of making the new purchases work back home. I've got a 30Gb drive I still haven't hooked up to it's intended PC.

It's what I call the "toy effect". Males, particularly, like having and acquiring "toys". Thus the popular phrase "He who dies with the most toys wins" and "The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys". Men, note, though I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the fact that some women collect toys in a similar fashion.

Sydney had a show along that theme some while ago, called "Big Boys Toys". Computers didn't seem to really rate much of a mention - possibly because they can (and do) take up shows all by themselves - but also because the sort of toys on display in this show were mostly ten to a thousand times in price. Things like home theatre systems, motorcycles, light-planes, etc. The purpose of the show was to show off what there was, just in case you saw something you never realized was available. But there were salespeople there, too, never to miss an opportunity.

For some people it takes special discipline to not indulge. Things like leaving the credit cards at home. I don't usually have that problem, thus am better able to resist the lure of owning something Cool and New. So tell me what you're like. How much do you like buying new toys? And how easily can you resist their lure?

Wade Bowmer, aka Static

Comments? Email me at static dash page at yceran dot org.