Playing It Inexpensive: At the Trailing Edge of Technology

I was LMAO ROFL (enjoying it immensely) when I saw the announcement of the Apple iPhone price cut to 399 all the way from 599 (or to 400 from 600 as your brain should really see it). Whatever be the reasons for the price cut, the joke is on those guys who stood in line less than two months ago to have the privilege of paying 50% higher price just for the sake of owning it a few days earlier than the rest of the crowd. I bet a whole bunch of them just bought it for the cool-factor than really needing to zoom in and out of their pictures with two fingers instead of pressing keys. I do not remember anything falling so much in price after so much hype like the iPhone. Some call it a ripoff of the early adopters! Snazzy interface with handicapped functionality only extracts so much from only so many lusers users wallets.

I know geeks take immense pleasure in staying at the cutting edge of technology by buying the latest gadgets. Phones are not the only such gadgets where early adopters pay the huge premiums. Computers, Blu-Ray/HDDVD players, Televisions and most other equipment charge a premium when they are the top-of-the-line. I remember someone at the recent Hotchips 2007 conference announcing at the mike that he regularly buys $8000 systems to play games. BTW, he looked more than 50 years old!
I said in a previous post of mine about shopping that I Forget the Features to avoid paying too much to future proof my purchases but focus on what I want in basics. However, I am deeply indebted to sheeple people who pay through their nose for bleeding edge technology since they partly contribute to keeping the technology industry (ergo my job) humming.

I did the whole bleeding edge thingy when I bought my first cellphone, a Sony CMD Z1. I bought it when I was a student (when a dollar is worth more than $1) for more than $200 and after just one year it was priced at $39. My last two cellphones were exactly the type of purchases that vampires vendors hate. I bought the Treo 300 (ugly beast of a phone) when the rebates dropped so low that I made $30 when I bought it on Amazon (and made $50 more when I sold it on craigslist a couple of years later). I realized I did not really need the keyboard as much when it made the phone so bulky. The next purchase was when I bought two Audiovox SMT 5600 Windows mobile phones for $20 each from cingular when it was being phased out.

I reckon I saved about 600 dollars in total by waiting an year from the prime-time of those phones. Dropping the price of an iPhone does not do much for me. My Audiovox plays mp3s very well through its speakerphone speaker. It also syncs very well over my vmware installation of windows to my corporate Exchange. Imagine saying that with iPhone in one sentence – sync, vmware, Exchange! The one I lust after is the HTC Vox (interestingly at the same $400 price point currently as iPhone) with a slick keyboard underneath a candybar form factor. I am still waiting for it to be released and become obsolete…