Keeping up with the Lims

I used to spend a lot of money as an early adopter of new toys that come along. I was quite at the forefront: the early 3D graphic accelerators just before the mid 90s, optical drives from 1995, video imaging starting from CD-i then to first generation Creative Encore DVD drives just a few years after that, then PDA gadgets starting from the monochrome Palm then HP Jornadas at the turn of the century.

Now, one gadget that I’ve flip-flopped around quite a bit are the personal organizers. I oscillated between those paper organizers to Palm IIIs to various HP Jornadas then to Smartphones. Their primary function back then was to help me keep in my head the “Tasks” and to-do-list of things at any given point in time.

Thing though is that those gadgets just didn’t hold for long. The problem invariably centered on that I found my lifestyle having to change around those personal organizing devices as opposed to the other way round. Moreover, I could remember those task lists just fine, and hopefully can still in the next years to come LOL.

In any case, after marriage and now mindful of home accounting, I’ve become a lot more circumspect in throwing money just to satisfy early curiosity. That there’s a lot more information and site previews on products online helps a lot. Say for instance I took a while to decide on a gaming console, getting as much information as I needed to decide. And the current graphics accelerator in my PC is now 1.5 years old: unheard of 8 years ago when I was upgrading the graphics card every 6 months. And I held off buying a netbook for 6 months until I was absolutely certain how I’d use it.

The benefit of realigning your purchasing workflow is of course less money wastage. I’m still buying toys, but hey, at least I think twice now – and that’s a first step.:)