Saving on Software

Since buying my new Mac, I'd been wondering what to do about my lack of Word and Excel programs on it. I could use the basic TextEdit program for minor bits of writing, but I don't need to do that very often. What I really wanted was to be able to play with complicated financial spreadsheets at home! It's been such a long time since I've been able to easily do that. On my old Mac, I had to run the OS9/Classic operating system to use Excel, which was a nuisance so I never did it. I ended up doing all my spreadsheets at work. Which I really didn't have time for unless I stayed late and blew off the gym-- not good.

So with the new Mac, I wondered what to do. First thing was to call my friend Mortimer, who I thought might have an extra copy of Microsoft Office. I am not advocating software piracy here, but it sometimes comes with multiple user licenses and I liked the idea of "free!" But Mortimer wasn't able to help me.
Next I considered buying Microsoft Office. It's about $150 for the Home/Student edition, which should do more than enough for someone like me. But the customer comments on Amazon made it sound kind of buggy, so I stopped just short of hitting the "buy now" button.
Then I wondered about Apple's iWork-- that was only $79, but it sounded like I could potentially run into some compatibility problems if I was emailing files to PC users.
Some of these "problems" might have been the misguided rants of crazy Amazon customers, but it was enough to make me hesitate about spending so much money. I tried looking on some Mac forum elsewhere, I don't even remember which one, and noticed a mention of a program called NeoOffice. It's an open source, volunteer-developed Office-type program. They ask that you make a donation before downloading it, but it can be as little as $5. I decided to give it a shot.
After playing around with it a little, I am totally impressed and can't believe it's basically free. If you're used to Word and Excel and Powerpoint, you might find a few things slightly different, but it's 90% identical, and seems to work really well. Here's a highly sophisticated chart I was working on to illustrate the price differential:

I'm looking forward to posting a lot more financial charts and spreadsheets now! Thank you NeoOffice!

Big Money Weekend

I am writing my first blog post on my new computer! Yes, I went for it, and I'm thrilled. I decided to get a MacBook-- the 2.4ghz, 250GB hard drive model, upgraded to 4GB of RAM. I was tempted by the pretty MacBookPro, but since I don't really need a 15" screen or super duper video graphics capabilities, I thought the regular MacBook would do the job, for a lot less money. Upgrading the RAM seemed like a good investment, since I plan to use this computer for as many years as I possibly can, and who knows how much memory future operating systems and programs might need.
While writing this post, I discovered one complication with my new set-up-- in addition to my new laptop, I got an AirPort base station so I could go wireless. (The $99 AirPort is now connected to my stereo so I can play music from my computer through the speakers, so it's already paid for itself by making a new CD player totally unnecessary. My old CD player broke during my move.) But the problem is that I have one of those power strips where the main outlet controls several other outlets-- I can save a few bucks by making sure my modem doesn't draw power while my computer is turned off. But that means that if I unplug my laptop to take it into the other room, as I just did, the main outlet powers off and so do the modem and the AirPort, since I can't fit them both into the outlets that are independent of the main outlet-- so suddenly, no more internet! Guess I'll have to rejigger that setup and figure out some other way to conserve electricity while still having wireless internet when I want it! (The answer turned out to be some little extender cables I'd bought at Radio Shack ages ago and never actually used-- they're about 6 inches long and are perfect for when you need to plug bulky AC adapters in right next to each other. I'll just move them into the non-switched outlets whenever I want to be online while not sitting at my desk.)

More details on my computer shopping experience: I planned my purchase around a weekend visit to a friend in Connecticut-- their sales tax is only 6% compared to NY's 8.25%. I also got a lucky break on the cost of the extra RAM-- normally Apple charges $400 for this upgrade, but for some reason, the Apple store I went to did it for only $300! All in, my new computer set-up cost me just over $2,000. When I think that I paid about that much for my first computer, a Macintosh PowerBook 165c with 4MB of RAM (yes MB not GB), it's just mind boggling. I also have to say that I was absolutely amazed at how easy it was to switch from my old iBook to this computer: I connected them with a Firewire cable, clicked "OK" a couple times, and several minutes later, all my documents and programs were on the new computer, all set up exactly as they were on the old one. Everything just instantly worked! I'm sorry if I'm sounding like a Mac commercial, but they really do know how to make things fabulously easy.

Of course, the trip to the Apple store involved a trip to a mall. And we all know that malls are dangerous, don't we! It took an hour and a half for them to install the RAM on my computer, and during that time, I managed to buy two t-shirts, a short-sleeved blouse, and a pair of hiking shoes, as well as some cute outfits for my niece and nephew. (Macy's, Ann Taylor, The Walking Company, and H&M!) Total additional spending for the day: $187. Oh well-- I can now feel like I've given myself enough of a treat with my bonus, and the rest is staying in the bank where it belongs!

BBC Shortwave Discontinued Due to Price of Diesel Fuel?

BBC Ends English Shortwave Service in Europe

This story interested me for a couple of reasons. First of all, I remember my father listening to the BBC on a boxy old shortwave radio when I was a kid, and somewhat more recently, I was seeing someone who asked for a portable shortwave radio for Christmas, in order to listen to the BBC, among other things (fortunately it was a couple of years before the BBC ended shortwave service to North America, which happened in 2001). Oh, and guess what: good shortwave radios can get very expensive!
Of course the BBC isn't the only good thing about shortwave: you can get all kinds of stations from all around the world. There is also some way you can use a shortwave radio to count meteors during a meteor shower, if I remember correctly-- if you tune it a certain way, there will be a spike in the volume level of static whenever there is a meteor, or something like that. (Go ahead and be impressed that someone like me knows this!) Shortwave radio seems like one of those odd little geeky hobbyist things that is actually kind of neat.

But of course everything that was neat about shortwave radio is also what is neat about internet radio, so the shortwave medium has been on its way out for a while, at least in the developed world. But the reason I'm writing about it is the strange financial cause-and-effect relationship noted in the article linked above:

“What [die-hard shortwave listeners] don’t understand is the huge cost of powering transmitters. The cost of diesel fuel has doubled.”

Obviously I don't have all that technical a mind, but I never would have thought to link the cost of diesel fuel to the viability of broadcasting shortwave radio. You learn something new every day.

The Gift That Keeps on Taking

Have you ever been given a gift that cost you money? My favorite example of this is an iPod.
I was given my first iPod several years ago. It was just at the point where I'd started to think having one might be sort of cool, but I wasn't planning to spend money on one. This sort of surprised some people, given that I could be quite obsessed with gadgets like Palm Pilots & things, but I guess I just hadn't caught the digital music bug badly enough yet to want to spend a few hundred dollars.
Anyway, when I received the iPod, I was excited. Sometimes my favorite kind of gift is something that I really need and want and have asked for so I don't have to spend my own money on it. But sometimes, an even better gift is the thing that you kind of admire but have written off as being too expensive or there is some other reason you are never going to buy it for yourself, so it's a delightful surprise when someone makes that decision for you!
However, with my first iPod, I soon discovered that the gift came with strings attached. First of all, I had to buy a separate connector cable that would work with my work computer. Then, once I'd connected the iPod at home, it turned out that the operating system on my Mac was too early a version and I'd have to upgrade. Once I finally got everything to work, I started downloading lots of songs from iTunes. Then I decided I would need a protective case for the iPod. Then I wanted a cable to connect it to my stereo. Then I bought a radio transmitter thing so I could listen to it in a car. Then I realized that the hard drive on my iBook was full due to all the music I'd loaded up, and that I'd need a new computer if I ever wanted to fully take advantage of the iPod's capacity.
All that probably happened in the first couple of months I owned the iPod. I enjoyed using it, but I don't tend to listen to music on the subway everyday or at the gym, so I used my iPod mainly on long plane or car trips and plugged in to the speakers at home. As all the new iPods came out, I'd sometimes covet one, but never enough to trade up, even though the old iPod's battery life got worse and worse. For the way I used the iPod, I just didn't care about spending any more money on one.
But lo and behold, I was given a new one this year. The minute I opened it, my first thought was, that's nice but there are lots of other things I could have used more, but by thought number two, I'd transitioned into full-blown "ooh, isn't the color screen pretty" techno-lust, and immediately thought about whether I'd want to spend money downloading movies and TV shows. So far, I have not spent a penny on this new iPod. I did download some more songs from iTunes, but that was with a gift card someone else gave me. I do need a new case, but for now, I can sort of use it in the case that I bought for my old iPod. But unfortunately, what I really do need even more now is a new computer, since my old Mac is now totally incompatible and I don't know if it can even handle being upgraded to the latest OS.
So my first free iPod cost me a couple hundred dollars, and my second free iPod may cost me well over $1,000! Not that I'm really going to complain if people keep wanting to give me iPods...

A Pricing Analysis of Amazon's Kindle E-Book Reader

The latest publishing buzz is Amazon's introduction of the Kindle, a new e-book reader. At $399, it's a bit pricey: Sony's e-book reader is $100 less. And there are many e-books that can be read on PDAs-- even if you're dealing with text-only on a much smaller screen, you don't necessarily need a separate device. But the Kindle offers some pretty cool features, and the books and newspapers that are available to be read on it are discounted quite a bit compared to their print versions. Can the Kindle end up paying for itself?

I actually had a chance to play with one of these a few months ago. I thought the size and weight were ok, and the experience of using it was pretty impressive-- not perfect, but better than any other portable electronic reading device. I liked the fact that it was a stand-alone wireless product: if you're traveling or at the beach and you decide you want to read something, you can go online and download it without having to go back to your computer, and without having to subscribe to any sort of wireless plan or be at a hotspot since it's on a cell phone network. All in all, I was intrigued by what the device could do, but as a dedicated PDA user, I didn't see myself buying another electronic device to tote around. (Also, a large percentage of my reading is done in manuscript form before the book is actually published, and though I could probably do some of that electronically, I'm not necessarily the ideal user for this product.)

But when I tried the Kindle, I didn't even think about the costs that might be involved. A lot of early comments have focused on the fairly high price of the device-- is it worth the money?

Books: NY Times Bestsellers and New Releases are $9.99 on the Kindle. For hardcovers that are $25 and up (the new Ken Follett hardcover is actually $35, which seems like a shocking price for fiction, even if it is over 1000 pages!), you're saving at least $15 per book. If you buy 26 hardcover books, the savings offset the price of the Kindle.

Newspapers: the NY Times is $13.99 a month. I pay $40.80 a month for delivery of the print edition. 15 months of subscribing saves you enough to pay for the Kindle.

Magazines: The Atlantic is $1.99 a month on the Kindle. Amazon offers subscriptions to the print edition at $24.95 a year, or $2.08 a month. The cover price on a newsstand is $4.95. No big savings for subscribers, but if you'd been buying individual copies, your savings would pay for your Kindle in, oh, about 11 years.

Blogs: $0.99-$1.99 a month each. Well that's not much of a deal, is it? Blogs are usually free, so here's one area where the Kindle doesn't exactly win. But compared to the cost of having a wireless Internet plan that allows you to go online and read blogs anywhere on a laptop or handheld, it might be a good deal, at least if you only read a few blogs. Their current selection is not all that great. None of the personal finance blogs that I read are included. From a quick search, the only blog I read that's on there is Apartment Therapy, which is one of the $1.99 ones. Until My Open Wallet is available in Kindle format, obviously this feature of the device is useless.

Bottom line: if you are someone who reads a lot and likes to read current bestselling hardcovers when they first come out, the Kindle could save you quite a bit of money. It's also probably lighter and smaller than that doorstop by Ken Follett, so you might avoid some chiropractor bills too. And aside from anything else, it's a nifty new electronic toy that I'm sure will end up under the Christmas trees of many people whose loved ones wonder what you get for the person that has everything... What do you think? Would you buy one?

Is it a Sure-fire Money Loser?

Back to my interest in gadgets for a moment, I've been interested in the reactions to Palm's announcement of a new mobile device called the Foleo. It's basically a keyboard and screen that you use with your smartphone. It's a little smaller than a laptop, and a little cheaper than a laptop, but otherwise, it's basically just like a laptop, except with its brains taken out and residing in a nearby cellphone.
I can understand the need for a keyboard that goes with a PDA or phone, and I have one that I sometimes use with my Treo, if I want to write blog posts while traveling, perhaps. My keyboard cost $99, and it folds so it's not that much bigger than the Treo itself, and the whole point of having it is to avoid having to carry a laptop. The whole point of PDAs and smartphones, in fact, seems to be to avoid having to carry a laptop. So it was no surprise to me that when Palm announced the Foleo, the response on all the gadget websites seemed to be "HUH?" and it was quickly dubbed the "Fooleo."
So my question is, if you're the CEO of Palm and you've just announced a product that seems to be universally perceived as a dud, what do you do? Forge ahead hoping that enough people will still spend $500 on this device to make it profitable? Cut your losses while you can and cancel the product? Try to market the heck out of the thing to make potential users believe there is actually a need for it? I suppose the American economy has been driven by many inventions that were initially thought to be stupid and useless... but what would you do if you were trying to sell a product that your target customers seemed to just hate? Give up? Keep trying?

Her Open Bag: An Interview with Judie Lipsett Hughes of GearDiary

I've previously mentioned that I used to spend a lot of money on PDAs. While in that phase, I was a voracious reader of several tech/gadget sites, some of which I still follow. Though becoming a money blogger was not yet even a glimmer in my eye back then, one of the most memorable reviews I ever read on a gadget site caught my interest because of a financial angle. Why? Because it was about a $5,500 bag!
I had often thought it would be an interesting story to blog about, but I held off, thinking I didn't really have enough to say about it from my own perspective... however, the wonderful thing about the internet is that sometimes, if you want to know more about someone, you can just write to them and ask, and they might write back, as Judie Lipsett Hughes did to me! So finally, I can tell this story, in the form of My Open Wallet's first-ever interview!

Judie is a well-known reviewer and opinion-maker when it comes to gadgets and technological gear. I always enjoyed the reviews she wrote for The Gadgeteer, and now Judie has her own site called Gear Diary. One of the reasons I think I've always enjoyed Judie's writing is that she has a broader focus than just the nuts and bolts arcana of operating systems and hardware-- in Judie's words:

We all have gear that we use daily - some of it electronic and some of it organic. I think it is fascinating to explore the equipment that makes our lives easier, more entertaining, more productive, and more manageable.

And more expensive, one might add! So what's the story with the $5,500 bag? Many women, and even, I suspect, many men, can identify with wanting to have the perfect bag in which to carry around all your stuff. If you're into gadgets, it's even more of an issue-- you don't want PDA's, cameras, cellphones and iPods all floating around and getting lost or damaged in some big shapeless bag along with your wallet, makeup, used tissues and 14 pens. And on top of that, a bag can be something you wear like clothes, so for many people, its looks matter. As Judie said in her original review:

I didn't want an over the shoulder Cordura or leather bag that shouted Geeky contents inside...even though there are. I didn't want a modified briefcase, messenger bag or sling thing. I wanted something fashionable, feminine, and luxe...and it had to have enough pockets and slots for the daily things I carry.

Judie decided that the answer was to have a bag custom made for her, and she chose the Alexandra Knight Taylor Tote shown to the left (there are lots more photos in the Gadgeteer review).


But, guess what: a custom-made bag like this that is both beautiful and functional isn't cheap. And some commenters at the Gadgeteer forums had strong reactions to the $5,500 price tag:

Hawkeye: < typical guy response > You seriously dropped $5,500 on a bag? I would custom make you a bag with my own skin for $5,500.< /typical guy response >

ChrisSpera: The price almost made me soil myself...

Reading all this made me want to ask Judie some questions from a personal finance perspective, which she graciously answered:


Madame X: First of all, you bought and reviewed this bag back in 2004-- do you still use it? How often?

Judie: Oh, I absolutely use the Taylor Tote; in fact I have been carrying it for the past few days. Since I own quite a few bags (although none of them cost as much as this one did), I try to rotate them all. It helps to keep the bags from appearing worn, and it makes me feel like I have a “new” bag when I can pull out something that I have not carried in a while.

MX: Do you still feel it was a good decision to spend that much money on it?

J: Well, the way I looked at it when I bought the bag was that it was a timeless design I could carry for decades; it would never go out of style. I definitely still feel that way, and I am glad that I got the bag when I did. Fortunately, Alexandra Knight offered a no-interest payment option, so I was able to break the total cost into three installments; this helped make the purchase a little less painful. I can still remember agonizing over the cost of the bag to this day, it was definitely not a decision that I made lightly; I probably would not do it again, but I am very glad that I did it then.

MX: You must get compliments on the bag...

J: I have received many compliments on the Taylor Tote, but mostly from people who think it is a sharp looking bag, or those who get close enough to notice its organizational features. With that said, it isn’t a bag to carry if you want strangers to walk over and compliment you while they speculate on your bag’s cost. I had a Louis Vuitton Suhali Le Fab that got way more attention than this bag does, and I found that I didn’t like it; I actually returned that bag.

MX: Exactly-- it's not a logo-brand item that shouts that it is expensive. I'm sure people can look at it and see that it is very well made of beautiful leather-- but part of what made it worth the money for you is the hidden stuff on the inside that people will never see...

J: You’re right…the Taylor Tote doesn’t have a trendy or attention grabbing design, nor is it an obviously branded bag. What makes this bag worth it for me, is that even though I am not carrying a single device anymore that was shown in the Taylor Tote’s review back in 2004, the way that I configured the bag’s pockets still works for me with the equipment I am now carrying. Since I have almost owned the bag for three years, its price is starting to average down for me; after I have owned it and used it for ten years - or even twenty years - I won’t even remember what the fuss was about when I agonized over buying it…or at least, that’s how I justify it now. ;-)

MX: What about the comments in the forums: it seemed that men reacted differently than women? My impression has been that the audience of gadget sites skews more towards males-- do you think they'd have been more understanding if you'd spent $5,500 on something other than a handbag? It seemed like some of the women who commented were more appreciative of the value.

J: Well, the short answer is that I think women are a little less affected by sticker shock. Women who follow fashion tend to be pretty savvy about the prices of high end designer handbags, and whether or not we would be willing to spend the money, we are at least aware of the prices out there. With that said, I think every person has a price threshold for the items they buy, whether they are aware of it or not. Male or female, we’ll hear a price for a particular item and say to ourselves “yeah, okay,” or “there is no way!”

I think that while some of the commenters were shocked at the price of the bag, the reactions were skewed by the audience. For instance – where is the better value? A bag that might last 30+ years? Or a high end desktop that will be obsolete in 2 years. It’s all relative, but not everyone gets that. I can’t even remember how many laptops, PDAs, and gadgets I have bought, used for a while, and then given away. If I had all that money back, I could buy the Barenia Birkin I have always wanted - with all the matching accessories, and still have money left over. But I sure did enjoy all those gadgets…

MX: That's a great point about what lasts vs. what becomes obsolete. At least one female commenter seemed to be impressed that your husband "let you" buy the bag! Do you and he have an agreement about how you pool or divide your finances and make spending decisions?

J: Yeah, I think it was pretty shocking that anyone would be surprised that my (now soon-to-be-ex) husband “let” me buy anything (the feminist in me gags at the thought). Without going too deeply into it, I certainly never needed his "permission" to spend my own money. I didn’t really delve into it in the review or forum, but when I am about to make a major purchase of any kind, I will generally use my partner as a sounding board. I am basically listening to myself as I justify why I want to buy the item. If my reasons sound acceptable as I list them, and if the person listening doesn’t look at me like I am completely crazy, then I will chew on the idea a little bit more and then decide. But no one gives me permission to buy or “lets me” buy anything, except myself as my finances dictate.

MX: What are some other items you've purchased where you felt a high price was worth it?

J: Definitely vacations and travel. Sometimes I just need to get away from the computer, away from the internet, away from being plugged in – and being able to lie on a beach with my daughter, or discover a place that we both find interesting is a great way to unwind. Travel is definitely something that can take priority over even the coolest gadget, and it is worth every penny.

MX: If you had to name one "thing" you've bought that was truly worth the money, what would it be?

J: Well, I recently purchased a vintage Alfa Romeo Quadrifoglio. This particular model car had a lot of sentimental value to me, as I had owned the same model 19 years ago; so I think that was a purchase where the high price was worth it. Of course, “high price” is relative: the Alfa cost much less than the average used car, and even though it was a bit of an impulse item, I am pleased to have it. The Alfa is my “ultimate gadget” at the moment, and I am going to have fun playing with it.

MX: Do you have the same philosophy about spending money on technological gear as you do on other things like food, clothes, home furnishings etc? Do you or would you make sacrifices in other areas of your spending in order to be able to afford the latest technology?

J: Well, I would never go without food or shelter to own the latest gadget, and my house is pretty much furnished thanks to various furniture sales where they offered 0% interest for a year and I paid everything off under that time frame. Notice a trend here? I am all about the zero finance charge – in fact, that’s how I got my current Fujitsu Tablet PC, too. But I digress…

Sacrifices I have made haven’t been too lifestyle cramping: like maybe I went without a certain designer bag that caught my eye, because I wanted a wide camera lens. Since I don’t wear a lot of high-end designer clothing, and since I live in a city with a much lower cost of living than most urban areas, my gadget habit hasn’t really cramped my style too badly. I enjoy my gadgets, but I will not hole-up in a basement or live in a tree house to indulge my habit.

MX: What gadgets do you think offer the best value for money?

J: Those that will be used repeatedly (preferably daily), that will last for a few years, and that do exactly what they are supposed to do – almost every time without fail. Unfortunately, this very definition excludes many of the PDAs I have tried. The good news is that since I often give away my old gadgets either directly to friends or in contests on Gear Diary, they get used for much longer than they might have otherwise. Whether I got the gadget from a company to review or I purchased it myself, passing things on to the next user is a great way to spread the love, foster excitement, or pay it forward – however you want to look at it.

MX: Are there any gadgets that you think are a total waste of money?

J: I would never pass that judgment; just as one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, for every gadget made there is a person that needs it or wants it for a particular application; while someone else might never need anything like it, and wouldn’t understand why the first guy would want it.

MX: Surely you have some stories about stupid expensive gadgets?

J: Okay, I did buy a bread machine once. I wound up giving it away after using it maybe…twice? Maybe three times. It was expensive, and I regret the purchase.

MX: Any tips on how to get the best price on electronic gadgets and related gear, or other advice for my finance-minded readers?

J: Of course the best way to really save money is to not shop, because it is always too easy to find things you just have to have…but that’s not always realistic. As far as gadgets – I have found that it is almost always less expensive to buy online rather than in a brick and mortar store. You should be smart and use services like pricegrabber.com or shopper.cnet.com to compare prices – and also run Google searches for the best price. Sometimes you can save a bundle, other times the prices will be standardized- but at least you’ll know you got the best deal that you could possible get.

Also when shopping, the best advice – which I have so much trouble following myself – is to wait. When something is brand new and in demand, it always costs a premium. If you can wait a while – sometimes a few months, sometimes up to a year – the prices will almost always come down. This works for everything from gadgets to most “It” bags. Also, you should never underestimate the power of eBay. So many times I have found something that I really wanted there, and since I didn’t mind buying it slightly used, I saved a bundle.

MX: To what extent are you spending your own money on gadgets? Do the reviews you write cover the costs, either by free goods received or ad revenue from your website?

J: I do spend a lot of my own money on my own gadgets. I think that there is a big misconception out there that bloggers are given every device that they review, which is definitely not the case. I do occasionally get free devices which I will disclose receiving in their review, but the majority of the PDAs and PDA phones that I own are purchased by me because I think I will like them; they might also be loaned to me by a PR company, the manufacturer, or a retailer, which I will also disclose. I generally get to use “loaner devices” for 14 – 30 days, but then I must return them.

I do receive ad revenue from Gear Diary, and I do use that to buy all sorts of gadgets, but there are also a lot of other site-related expenses that crop up which I cover with that money. It’s okay though: making money to pay for the gadgets that I would have bought anyway isn’t the reason I write, and I am not trying to grow rich by blogging about the gadgets I enjoy using.

MX: Could you estimate how much of your income you spend on gadgets? If you weren't a professional reviewer, would that change?

J: I’m not sure if I would count myself as a professional reviewer, simply because this is not my ‘day job’ – I also manage my family's ranch. I don’t even try to make enough money from Gear Diary to sustain myself, much less a full staff. I prefer to think of myself as a consumer who writes reviews. I am in the company of 11 other regular writers who also feel the same, as well as occasional contributors. We write because we enjoy using and trying new technology, we want to share our experiences with others, and yes…because we enjoy seeing our name in lights, so to speak.

If I had to estimate the percentage of my income that I spend on gadgets…I’m guessing it would be in the 20% range…but realize that this includes laptops, desktops, home gadgets and accessories, PDAs, PDA phones, photography equipment, digital music players, trips to gadget shows…you name it! There are certain genres of gadgets that I am not overly crazy about – they just aren’t my forte, but there are plenty of others that spark my interest. Nine times out of ten, if I really want to try out a particular gadget, I will figure out a way to justify buying it.

If I wasn’t a reviewer, I would probably spend about the same as I do now…which is the whole reason I started writing reviews in the first place. I figured that if I was going to buy these items anyway, I might as well write about them. My hope is that if I find a product I love, it will encourage someone who is on the fence to make the plunge. But if I find flaws with a product and report on them, it might save another consumer the trouble and frustration.

MX: Well, I'm sure you've saved me some trouble, frustration, and money over the years! Thank you, Judie!

If you enjoyed Judie's comments, check out Gear Diary to learn more and read her latest reviews... but watch out! You might be tempted to buy some new toys!

TV and Credit Cards: In Taxis!

While heading home from the wedding I attended this weekend, I had my first ride in one of New York City's TV-equipped cabs. These have been in the news lately, as of course not everyone thinks they are a good thing! So what are they?


Facing the passenger in the back seat, there is a touch-screen with a slot for swiping a credit card. You can tap the screen to select various options: yes that is Jim Cramer above, but you can also watch news, read taxi information such as the Passengers' Bill of Rights, and view your cab's current location on a map of New York City, via a GPS system.

The fare meter amount is visible in the lower right corner of the screen. The system also shows advertisements. You can tap the screen to adjust the volume, and there is a red button in the upper right corner that says "off," though when I tapped it, nothing happened.


I played around with the unit for a little while, and snapped these photos with my Treo. Soon enough, the driver asked me what I thought of "the new technology."
He told me that most of his fellow cab drivers hate it. My driver doesn't own his cab-- he leases it from a taxi company. He pays $118 a day to drive his cab for 12 hours. (His cost goes up to $132 a day for the busy Thursday-Saturday period. Also, if he returns his cab 20 minutes late, he has to pay a $20 fine.) Cab drivers also have to pay for their own gas. It's easy to see why drivers need to keep their cabs full of paying customers, preferably ones who take lots of short, fast trips. On a slow day, they might end up with $50 in their pockets after covering their expenses.

The leasing company owns about 400 taxis, and according to my driver, less than 50 of them were leased this morning, as a kind of strike against the new TV system.
I don't know if there is really a widespread strike going on, but I had read that taxi drivers don't like the credit card system, because people sometimes swipe their cards and get out of the cab before the driver can discover that the card is declined. Some also think the GPS monitoring is an invasion of privacy. Some cabbies are also just finding the system difficult to use. My driver showed me the instructions he'd been given: a one page sheet with a few basic steps.


I helped him figure out how to enter the extra charge for a toll, as my preferred route took us through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, which costs $4.50. Unfortunately, the driver entered the toll amount as $14 in his little electronic keypad, and we couldn't figure out how to correct it.


Again, this guy's livelihood depends on speed-- he doesn't have time to sit there fiddling around trying to figure out how to enter information into a computer. However, he did acknowledge that the system is "the future," and thinks it will be a good thing once they work out a few bugs and get all the drivers properly trained on how to use it.

In the end, I didn't get to test out paying via credit card. Because the toll amount had been entered incorrectly, my total fare was shown as $39.60 instead of $29.60. I didn't really want to give the guy a $10 tip, and also worried that he wouldn't really get the money because of the toll error. So I ended up giving him $37.00 cash. That is a slightly bigger tip than I usually give cabbies, but having gotten this glimpse into the economics of his work day, I felt bad that we'd gotten stuck for 5 minutes while a bridge opened up to let a barge go up the Gowanus Canal. I also figured I owed the guy a little something extra for giving me some good blogging material!

By the way, not everything in his cab had gone high-tech:

The Cheapest Noise-Canceling Headphones

A while back, I wrote a post called "We Want to Be Alone, about how a lot of our spending these days is driven by the desire to isolate ourselves from others. Well, here's a great example of that: Headphones to Shut Out the World. In his New York Times column from yesterday, David Pogue writes about what has become a de rigeur accessory for many travelers: expensive headphones that provide a true luxury: quiet on an airplane, or wherever you might want it.
These have been around for a few years, starting with the original Bose models priced at about $350. That is a lot to pay for peace and quiet! So Pogue takes a look at some of the competing headphones that have since been introduced, to try to find the best bang for the buck. Or perhaps that should be the least audible bang for the buck.
His conclusion: the cheapest headphones, the $40 JVC HA-NC100, are compact and have a nice retractable cord, but they don't do as good a job of actually reducing noise.
But the next lowest priced models, the Panasonic RP-HC500 T at $100 (Yahoo shopping's lowest price is $114), and the Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7 at $132 ($199 at Amazon, unfortunately) were judged to be comfortable to wear, and did a great job at reproducing music as well as canceling outside noise. Both were judged to be indistinguishable in quality from the Bose headphones that cost about three times more.
I'm not planning to buy noise-reducing headphones for myself, but I've considered getting them as a gift for a good friend of mine who is a writer and finds noise really distracting when she's trying to work. $300 was too much for me to spend on such a present, but at $100 or so, I might just do it.

We Want to Be Alone

I was thinking about how much our economy and technological development seems to be driven by the desire not to physically interact with other people. Think about it: we have gone from being entertained by plays and movies in theaters, to having TV sets in our living rooms, to watching video iPods. And with music: from concerts, to radios and stereos in the home, to Walkmans to iPods. Telephones used to have party lines, and there used to be more phone booths-- now we have cell phones. Now the internet gives us so many reasons to do things from the comfort and privacy of our own homes rather than among other people: shopping, dating, education...
Of course cars are a big one-- we've developed this American dream of having your own car, not taking public transportation. And the wealthier people get, the more they isolate themselves: owning yachts instead of going on cruise lines, taking private jets instead of flying commercial, building houses with pools and fitness rooms so they don't have to go to a gym.

Sometimes I feel pretty anti-social myself. Now that I have bought this apartment with outdoor space, I find myself wanting to stay home and enjoy it. I'm also keenly aware of needing to stay on my budget. So every weekend, I have this little inner debate: should I go out to a café for breakfast, or should I stay in and make my own coffee to save a few dollars? But even when I do go out to the café, it's not all that interactive, or even particularly interesting just for people-watching: everyone's just sitting there hunched over their laptops, with iPods on!

The Electronic Drool Aid Asset Test

Cell phones are a particularly egregious example of planned obsolescence-- lots of people seem to just upgrade their phones every year or two, taking whatever low-priced or free phone their service provider happens to be offering. My own approach has been a bit different-- when I first decided I wanted a cell phone, I had a very specific idea of what I wanted, and I didn't buy a phone until I found one that was right. It cost about $450-- so I bought it. I did have moments of groaning over how crazy it was to spend that much on a phone, but it was a great phone.
I used it for about 2 years and would still be using it now, probably, if it hadn't been stolen.
I loved it so much that I couldn't bear to replace it with a different model, but there was no way I was paying $450 again, or even more to buy it without a contract, so I bought a used one on eBay for much less-- unfortunately, it didn't always work very well. But I was still so in love with it that I had it repaired, twice, rather than replacing it. But that probably wasn't a cost-effective way of dealing with it.
After a while, the problem kept recurring and got worse: every time I picked up a call, I'd end up disconnecting it instead. It got so ridiculous that one of my friends, the one who was probably being hung up on the most often, gave me her old phone when she got a new one. I never liked itall that much, but it served the need for over a year, until recently, when the charger I had for it stopped working. I probably could have bought a new charger from a guy on the street for $5, which was how my friend had originally bought it. But I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do:

• Cancel my cell phone service, since I now have a landline again, as well as a Blackberry for work that I could use for personal calls, within reason?
• Buy a nice new phone?
• See what kind of phone I could get for free by renewing my contract?
• Wait for the iPhone?
• Buy a charger and keep using the old phone?

But what about the fact that I now have this Blackberry? I really don't like using the Blackberry as a phone or a PDA, but the email function has become a necessity for work, unfortunately. This has led to me carrying around a ridiculous number of gadgets:

• PalmOS PDA-- used for recording expenses in Pocket Quicken, Calendar and To-Do list, Addresses, Memos, encrypted storage of passwords, etc., e-books and dictionaries, a small amount of music, spreadsheets, worldwide weather forecasts, currency conversions and time zones, photos and movies of niece and nephew, restaurant and movie listings for NY and other cities, and other occasional random uses like an inflation calculator, calorie counter, constellation maps, flags of the world, wi-fi web browsing, solitaire, crossword puzzles and other games, and piano and guitar chords (not that I actually play these instruments, but it's a neat thing to have.) As you can see, this is something I really use! See this post for the complete history of money I've spent on Palm Pilots!
• Digital Camera-- you never know when you'll need to snap a photo
• iPod-- I rarely carry this around unless I'm taking a long plane journey. Otherwise I prefer to stay tuned into my surroundings.
• Cellphone
  
• Blackberry

Some of my devices do more than one thing, but often not well enough to get rid of the device that does only that thing and does it well. But I'd really like to cut back on carrying around and charging the batteries of all these devices! I can't get rid of the Blackberry, but I started to consider getting a Treo for all the rest. I love my current PDA and don't really want to stop using it, but a Treo with a big memory card would serve as a phone and a PDA, as well as being good enough for day to day music and photo needs. And getting the latest Treo would satisfy my inner geek needs. The more I thought about it, and the more I poked around online to research it, the more I wanted one! Unfortunately only Cingular sells the model I want so far, so I couldn't just renew my contract to get a good price on the Treo unless I moved my number over to Cingular. I've heard horror stories from a lot of people who have done this, so I want to just stick with T-Mobile and not complicate my life. But that means getting an unlocked phone, which would be about $450.
Compromise: buying a lightly used Treo on eBay... which is what I just did, explaining part of my higher than usual "miscellaneous" expense category for March.
I'm hoping that this Treo works out better than the last phone I bought on eBay. So far, it works well, and though I miss the larger touchscreen on my old Clie, I like the compactness of the Treo and the ease of being able to automatically dial every contact in my address book. The only thing that frustrates me is that I could use the device for email too, but T-Mobile's data plans are way too expensive. There is no way I'm doubling my monthly cell phone cost just for the convenience of occasionally checking my personal email or browsing the web. Especially since I can use my Blackberry for that. But now I loathe that turd of a Blackberry even more whenever I compare it to my shiny little Treo!

This is yet another thing I really hadn't planned to spend money on at this point. And of course now that I have it, I'll want some kind of case, and I've already had to spend a few bucks on new versions of some of the software I use. It's also time to go through the gadgets I'm not using any more and try to sell some of them on eBay, so perhaps that will help soften the blow a bit. Otherwise, I'm hoping my recently reawakened inner gadget freak will go back into hibernation so I can actually start saving money on a regular basis again! But my CD player turned out not to have survived my move-- no surprise, as it was a college graduation present and was already getting a bit wonky last summer. And with the extra space and more frequent visitors I have in my new apartment, watching DVDs on my 12" laptop isn't as satisfying as it used to be. I do kind of have a yen to get a bigger monitor that I could wire up to my stereo, and an extra set of speakers so I'll have good sound in the living room and the bedroom, and maybe a wireless router and an AirPort card so I can blog and listen to music while sitting outside, and an external hard drive so I can burn more music.... AAARRGH, I want a HOME THEATER SYSTEM!!! Must stop now!!!

What are your favorite electronic toys, a.k.a. productivity tools? How much money have you spent on them?