Think Different – Buy a Bigger Envelope!

YES! I am so, so with you on this! My upstairs neighbor is a gadget freak. We were recently discussing computers (I had to buy one).

My take? Best quality for the lowest price and only what I needed. A nice low-end Dell served my purposes. I would’ve loved a Mac. I can afford and work very effectively with a Dell - and put an Apple iPod sticker on it to make it look cool ;)

His take? MORE RAM! HARDCORE HARD DRIVE! 22″ INCH SCREEN! No, wait… get TWO screens!

And I was blinking at him, thinking, “Dude. Why?”

Yessir, wise words.

Totally agree. I felt this way about the iPhone when it was first released. Now nearly 7 months later and I still haven’t purchased one. Sure it’s a great little tool, but is it really going to change my life? No.

Like you when I was in college I bought a lot of crap on plastic that I’m still paying for. If only I could travel back in time. Now that would be something worth paying for!

I LOVE this idea - now whenever anyone says ‘look, a MacBook air can fit into an envelope’ I’ll just reply ‘yeah, well so can my computer - slightly bigger envelope, but who cares?’

Great tips on putting off spending too - I do find that if I just wait a while to think about a purchase it doesn’t often seem as necessary as it did at first.

I was incandescent with rage at Apple as they told me that my new iPod Touch (a present, lucky me!) was not compatible with my G4 iMac because my G4 iMac was four years old and that’s like expecting an iPod to work with an Apple Classic.

They were wrong about so many things when I spoke to them. For a start my computer is seven years old. Secondly if an Apple Classic had USB shaped ports I *would* expect it to work with an iPod.

Thirdly, mp3 and video files have hardly changed over the last 10 years so why would something that’s always worked now not work due to someone arbitrarily saying my machine was too old?

Happily Apple released an update for the iPod software which now means my lovely old iMac works with my lovely new iPod.

I keep hearing from people who want to wait until the latest expo so they can buy the latest product. I wait for the latest expo so I can buy the older products at a reduced rate.

I’m about to buy my second computer for 7 years and the only reason I’m doing that is because the hard drive is full and the fire-wire ports are fuxed.

Good article, Nick, well written.

This is SO true. And we photographers are probably the worst, between the computers and the camera equipment. There are some who actually switch brands every year, based on which company has the latest product.

I’ve avoided this for my camera gear (still using my trusty Nikon D70’s professionally) but made the mistake with my laptop last year when I bought a new Vista laptop the week Vista was introduced. TOTALLY screwed up my workflow…

Lovely post. Oh, and I couldn’t find a contact form, so I just figured I’d say eh up to another person from West Yorkshire. I grew up in Rothwell, and then suddenly one day I moved to California. ;)

I’ve subscribed to this blog and hope to become a regular.

@James: I’ve met people like that too. They’re normally asking me if I can lend them some change to buy a drink!

@Fraction: When you do crack time travel, let me know! I’ll be at the front of the queue.

@Beth: Glad you found it useful! Waiting a while is my favourite tip too - time seems to cure all.

@Matt: Thanks for the support and for sharing your experience - I know what it feels like to be upgraded into obsolescence! “I wait for the latest expo so I can buy the older products at a reduced rate.” - this is a great way to think. If only more people did…

@Paul: Tell me about it! Photography used to be a terrible cash drain for me. I have owned Leica M8s and other high-end kit; all have since been sold. Then one day it clicked - fancy kit should come after skill and perseverance with cheaper kit. My most expensive camera now costs less than £100.

@Linda: A Yorkshire lass gone Californian! How exciting - I do envy you. Thanks for chiming in and subscribing. Do feel free to pop back.

Thanks for the great response everyone. I have some more posts coming this week that I think you’ll love - stay tuned and spread the word!

Please, please, please can you delete this post? If my wife sees this one then I am in BIG trouble and will NEVER get to buy another toy!! ;)

It’s to late sweaty :)
Very good article !!!

Sorry, why buy a Mac? I’d love one and all that, but with a PC you can:
-Build your own (much cheaper)
-Use competition to your advantage (much cheaper)
-Get more software (much better)
-Not pay for *amazing* design (a compromise)
-and Upgrade without paying a mint (much cheaper)

I would love to own an iMac and have a MacBook Pro to take around with me while listening to music on my brand new iPod Nano and sending a text message on my iPhone, but I can’t afford it! If you can, either you have a massive amount of debt, or you need to give some of that money to me!!

Great article,

Isaac

Thanks Isaac. Though the article has a Mac-slant, the underlying message is the same whether you’re a Mac or PC user: if you don’t need to upgrade, wait until you do.

I’ve built several PCs from scratch in my pre-Mac days, but would never go back to that now. The time I spent building, tinkering, upgrading and trouble-shooting far outweighed the small amount of money you save compared with buying a pre-built Mac or PC that’s about a year old.

Anyway, thanks for commenting — I don’t want to get into a Mac vs PC debate, but might post about it in the future. Besides, it would run on forever — our scroll bars can only take so much punishment!

I’m not a Mac-hater! Just a poor student!!

Better to stay poor than go into minus numbers! Keep up the good work! :)

Also a thing to look out for, when they say you can buy it on credit, substitute the word “credit” for “debt”.

“Suddenly £5,000 interest free debt” doesn’t sound so good…

Hi Nick,

While this was a very, very good post, one that I will likely print out on very, very large paper and stick all over my bathroom walls for my charming but technologically lustful husband to read, I have to disagree on one thing.

If it brings me toast, I`m buying it. Will it add Marmite too?

@Matt: Thanks — I’d forgotten about that one! Yes, some people do recommend you start calling your credit card a debt card — it really does change the way you think about it (I no longer have any credit cards).

@Naomi: Ha! “Technologically lustful” is the most wonderful turn-of-phrase I’ve heard all year.

Don’t get me started on toast. As the proud owner of a toaster that cost around £150*, I know how out of control it can get (look - it was a present - honest**!).

* No, it doesn’t even add the Marmite.
** No, I don’t look up the price of all the presents I’m given. I was just curious this one time about how much a toaster with “Porsche***” on the front actually costs.
*** Yes, I have thought about taking it in for a service and asking for a replacement vehicle for the day. I’m just not brave enough yet.

Great article, Nick!

The only thing I’d advise is that if the thing you are wanting to buy is a tattoo, extend the waiting time to ten years. As I was growing up, I said that I’d only get a tattoo if I still wanted that same tattoo ten years later.

I have no tattoos.

And no regrets :)

Ha! Thanks, Joanna. I know plenty of people who could have done with your advice 10 years ago!

Luckily the hole in my nose healed to become almost invisible. :)

Great post. I anxiously watched the Keynote this year thinking that I could use an Air, but then I realized I don’t want my laptop to fit in an envelope. On the same note, I’m thinking of getting an ipod touch instead of an iphone and using it like a PDA. I may even try to get a refurb!

The iPod Touch works incredibly well as a PDA.

I didn’t even know I was that disoragnised until I got one (as a gift).
Now I know exactly how many meetings, emails, documents and projects I’ve missed the deadline for.

Great article. I wasn’t that impressed with the MacBook Air, although I’m DYING to get my hands on an iPhone.

It’s the iBrain I’m holding out for…

In general I agree with the sentiment but I think using the Macbook Air as an example was a mistake. The Air has a quality that’s missing from most every other laptop, certainly from every other Mac laptop… the weight of it.

That the MBA is so light that I don’t notice when I have it in my bag is a tremendous boon to a freelancing New Yorker like me. No longer do I have to decide whether it’s worth taking the machine with me - thinking through how many hours I’ll be lugging it around. Now it’s always with me and I find productive moments all over the city — waiting for the subway, in the 30 minute windows between meetings, etc.

So yes, don’t buy something just because it’s shiny and new — buy it because you truly need it.

And now that I think about it, I did what you said — I didn’t buy the shiny new laptop I wanted months ago — I waited and waited to see if Apple’s rumored lightweight laptop would really be what I NEEDED… and it was. :)

Well I guess the choice couldn’t really be described as a “mistake.” I checked out its stats and decided it definitely wasn’t for me because it lacked certain features I rely on. There are probably plenty of other people who don’t really need it, or who would find it less useful than an old heavyweight “deluxe model”. Whatever Nick had picked would probably have been the right product for someone. It’s good you like it and find it useful though :)

@Peter — don’t get me wrong; it’s a terrific piece of kit and a unique offering from Apple. But as Joanna says, for many folks, it will be beyond their real requirements.

I can definitely appreciate its advantages from the perspective of someone who has to lug the things around the hustle and bustle of NYC, though! I carried a company-provided 17 inch Powerbook around on buses for over a year. My back is still recovering!

Pish and tosh, Nick. use it to build muscle.
Think of it as a mini-gym workout and you’ll be proud to lug your soviet space-race-era monolith around with you. Soon enough you will have arms like an Olympic Shot-Putter.

Oh, and today is my day for proving my theory out.
I could have upgraded my phone when the iPhone came out because Orange were terrified that I’d leave for O2. They offered me a break in the contract but the phone I wanted would have been £70.

Today my new phone is being delivered. It is free, it comes with free insurance, free home wifi, unlimited text messages and more free talk time than I could shake a stick at, all for a fiver a month less than I was paying before.

It’s not an iPhone, and everyone will compare it to an iPhone (it’s the Viewty) but it will cost me £1,500 a year rather than £2,300 for the iPhone.

I may look like some sort of out of date —-[comment moderated by request], but at least I’ll be able to eat well and save my pennies.

That all sounds very expensive - I think I’ll stick to e-mail.

Sorry to be a politically correct killjoy, incidentally (not that sorry), but as someone with Romany heritage (and I think I’d object even if I didn’t have), I think the term “—-” is racially offensive, in much the same way that the “n” word and the “p” word are seen as offensive.

Regards,
Joanna

£1,500 a year! I think we should go back to tin cans and bits of string.

Joanna, apologies for any offense caused to you and anyone else who finds the term offensive.

I was vaguely aware of the origin of the slang term but oddly I didn’t connect the two things (—- and —-) as for me the two have never been used in the same vein.
However that does not make it true for all people so I happily retract the phrase.

As an extra guarantee I promise never to use the word again in any context.

Nick, is it possible to edit my entry with a less offensive term? Any one of your choice will be fine, as anything derogatory has it’s roots in unkindness.

To get us back on topic (again, with apologies) looking at the cost of most things over a year you do wonder why everything is that expensive. Unfortunately I need my phone for work so I’d love to ditch it but by law I need to be contact-able because I’m responsible for a building that also has residents living above it.

Should anything happen (and it usually happen at night) I have to be there within 40 minutes to meet the police.

Boo to responsibility.

No problem Matt, I think most of us make statements that are based on old prejudices without really thinking about them and most of us need to be told several different instances of it in our lives before we really, really get a handle on it. Take care :)

@Matt At the beginning of the year, as well as cutting up all my credit cards once and for all, I sat down and worked out what all my subscription services had cost me in unit-terms over the period of a year.

It turned out I was paying something like £2.50 a minute to make calls on my mobile (because I wasn’t using all my ‘preallocated minutes’). I phoned up the operator and negotiated the same package from £40 a month down to £10 with a free phone (which I’ve since sold), effectively giving me a year’s mobile contract for free!

You’re right - I think we are conditioned to pay whatever we’re told to these days. Sometimes you need to stop and wonder why…

This is a good article on a subject that is always relevant. However, I broke the ‘rules’ last September when I was in a situation where I felt the need to upgrade my tired old 8 y.o G4 in a bid to boost my motion graphics career. That is, I needed to do some freelance work and personal work for my portfolio.

I took out a fat loan for a new top spec iMac and consolidated my credit cards at the same time. This is the only way I could buy a new mac - living in London leaves little money left to save.

I’ve made that money I spent on the iMac back through freelancing, but I’m still paying that loan off for another 2.5 years. This article certainly has prompted ideas on how I could have improved my lot back in September without the loan. Extra RAM could have helped, installing USB2 cards, etc, etc.

I think there is a common attitude today of ‘want it now’ which I myself succumb to. It’s got me into trouble plenty of times. Let’s hope the iMac lasts me well into the next 5 years - oh and you’ll be pleased to know I’ve chopped up ALL my credit cards.

I totally agree with this. Impulse buying has gotten me into trouble. In the last few years, I’ve only bought things in cash. A Nikon 200 plus a funky lens? Cash. A new ASUS W7S? Cash.

It’s a lot better this way.

I’m really guilty of this myself.

I was a huge gadget fiend. I had to have the latest and greatest cellphone, PDA, MP3 player, on and on. I wound up heavily in debt due to this, and also wound up switching phone companies at least once every 6 months (And paying huge cancellation fees everytime).

I have mostly settled out though. Granted, I just went out and purchased a Macbook, my first Mac actually, but it was purchased for work since the company is pure Mac based enviroment, and I really wanted to get a laptop vs having the desktop I have now. However, the plan is for this laptop to last as long as humanely possible, perhaps with addition of a 320 gig harddrive, and a couple of extra gigs of ram.

Oh, and on the topic of the Air: When I was buying my MB, I asked about the Air, and the sales person there gave me the “I really hate that thing but have to like it” look…which is what I expected.

“Don’t use tomorrow to pay for today.” I blogged about that line although the post won’t actually go live till this Thursday. (I write my posts in advance.) It really helped me put my actions into perspective, as I was pouring over your blog to avoid studying for a test in my accounting course the next day. I sorta bomed the test, but I love your blog now! So I baisically used Put Things Off to put things off which I thinks contradicts what you’re all about. Sorry! :P But keep up the good work Nick. I really like your writing style.

Thanks!
I especially like the tip about planning the upgrades in 3,5,10 years. Just save up, and get the stuff without much pain - great. I’m gonna use this one.

Unfortunately, I can easily afford the Air and it’s the perfect notebook for my requirements… something I’ve been looking for for many years and not fulfilled with a T23 Thinkpad that I bought refurbished. I live cheaply and broke my gadget fixation many many years ago which has saved me considerable sums compared to the money I used to waste on computers. Worse, my brother, my parents (I don’t live with them, I’m in my 30s), one of my colleagues, and even my counsellor all think I should get the thing.

The problem is I really need to wait for the next revision of the Air (never buy a first release product) and I am having a horrible time waiting.

Yes, yes, I feel your sympathy.

A good way to reign in tech spending is to have a low WAF (wife acceptance factor) :)

I’ve never bought anything on credit (except my house) and I pay all my credit card debt off at the end of each month. This is possible because I treat my credit card as a delayed debit card.

By the way, I bought a Macbook Air and sold my 12″ PowerBook, because it is so light.

As a hobbyist DJ I can attest to these points about buying and upgrading new technology. There are a lot of gimmicky products that are all bells and whistles and zero build quality. In the DJ world at least, when just about every manufacturer can afford to put the newest features in their products, the real benchmark for quality lies in how long these products work reliably.

On the Macbook Air, it’s not beefy enough for general purpose use, at least from my point of view. The un-removable battery and lonely single USB port were the main deal-breakers for me.

I just discovered your blog after purchasing your ebook, Todoodlist. I had the same reaction when I saw the MacBook Air. My heart was racing also. It did pass and I should be very happy with my MacBook and iMac (and I am). Your points are well taken and I will try and control my computer lust. I am on my 14th Mac starting with the Mac 512E in 1985

@MacMacGa — 14th Mac! Great stuff. I’ve got a long way to go before I can show that type of commitment! Thanks for stopping by.

I don’t think that time travel will happen because if it does somebody would have come back from the future to tell us about it. Or perhaps they have….