Gadgets

I went to Best Denki trying to look for mp3 player. It seems that the store does not sell mp3 players. I ended up drooling over laptops and netbooks because it was really shocking to see how low the prices are right now.

To put things into perspective:

- MP3 players $100-$250

- iPod touch and above $300-$600

- Digital camera $150-500

- Low entry handphones cost $200-$400

- Portable gaming devices $300-$500

- Netbooks can go as low as $400-$500.

- High-end handphones are $600-$800

- Tablet computers are $600-$800

- Discounted laptops can be as low as $800-$900

- Normal laptops are usually $1200-$1800

- Macbooks are $1300-$2000

With limited money and so many wants, it is difficult to choose what to buy. For laptop, macbooks are completely out for me. Without being biased against Apple, it just DOES NOT make sense to buy Apple products of any sort. For an example, Macbooks come in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB. With their price tags, laptops from other brands will come with even 500GB harddisks. So is it really worth to get Mac? With the same amount of money, might as well get a discounted laptops (with capacity 250GB or 320GB) PLUS a netbook (with memory 250GB). One for home use and one travelling purpose. Isn't it better than ONE Mac? Discounted laptops will be my choice as latest laptops can be 1.5x than older models and to be honest, for normal daily usage, the difference is just not significant enough.

Tablets are "quasi-laptop" and I seriously see no value in them. For gaming, portable game devices like Nintendo DS or Sony PSP are definitely better. For connectivity and work-related stuff, netbooks are more capable and cheaper than tablets. Now with cheap laptops to be as low as $800-$900, tablets are seriously worthless.

Handphone is the huge grey area! The high-end phones are more expensive than netbooks and now is almost comparable to discounted laptops! Phones should be mainly used for making calls and sending smses. But with all the apps-fever, I agree that it maybe more convenient to have handphones for online access when I am on the move. Additionally, phones are multi-purpose with their capabilities for gaming, music, and camera. So I am alright for forking a bit more for phones. However, I am still anti towards $800-ish phones. Come on, is it really necessary to have a super duper display, a super duper processor, etc?? For goodness sake, it is still a phone after all! It should not and would not be able to replace the role of computers.

I used to be a fan of netbook when the cheapest laptops were still in the $1000-ish range. But now with laptops going down to $800-ish (and that includes the 11 inches ones), it may be more worthwile to get a laptop. However, with $400 price tags, I don't mind getting a netbook for work-sake due to its lightweight. But unfortunately, I don't need to move around that much and require computer access that much in my work that I think netbook is out of the picture for now.

Moving on to digital camera. I think their functions justify their price tags. Computers can't take photos and camera phones pale in comparison to digital camera for taking pictures. For normal use (to take pictures of interesting things and upload in my blog or facebook), I find my 3.2MP and 5MP camera phone to be good enough. But they are lousy when I go overseas or when there is low light. Ironically, I never own one. Reason being: I hardly travel so I hardly see the need of high quality camera. If I am someone who travels a lot, I will definitely own a digital camera.

Gaming devices are a niche area so whatever the price, they are still sort of "irreplaceable". You can play games on handphones but those games are just to kill time. Phones cannot beat the image quality and control experience from a gaming device. It is the same case with laptops/netbooks/tablet. Even though they may be able to produce better graphics, they cannot match the control experience from a gaming device. So gaming devices are definitely a yes for me.

Lastly, mp3 players. Some may argue it is "replacable" with phones nowadays. I beg to differ. Phones batteries kinda suck nowadays and I don't want my phone to die on me when I need it most for calling someone or messaging someone. So unless phones batteries can have awesome lifespan after a single charge, I still see a value of owning an mp3 player PROVIDED that I travel a lot. Lol. Again, I am not bashing Apple but I think it's stupid to get iPod. For similar price, mp3 players from other brands offer double or triple the capacity which iPod offers. iPod classic is actually the top with 160GB capacity. But come on, mp3 players are meant to be something portable. 160GB is like hundreds of hours of songs. Will you be travelling that much to be able to listen to hundres of hours of songs??

I am not a tech geek so of course these are broad generalisations as it does not really take into account  different brands, tech specs, memory capacities, features, etc. And the prices I mentioned are based on the notable brands eg. Apple, Creative, ASUS, Acer, Sony, Samsung, etc. I don't give a damn about random made in China mp3 players, for example. 

And for me the best combinations of gadgets are:

High-end mobile phone (with camera and internet) + gaming device + cheap laptop

+ mp3 player if I travel a lot

+ netbook if the laptop is not portable enough

+ digicam if someday I travel oeverseas a lot)

And sadly, based on what I own right now, I only have a good gaming device :( My mobile phone has a terrible camera in low light and connectivity is as good as being absent altogether. My laptop is dying but I shall wait until cheap laptops are equipped with new windows OS and USB 3.0 port or until my current laptop dies (whichever comes first). And I am craving for an mp3 player now.. In less than a week, I will have my rotation. And I need to spend 2 hours bus journey DAILY. T_T