$100 dollars - a laptop or a pair of jeans? (A discussion of value)

I am continually amazed at the inconsistencies of our modern society. I look around and I am confused. The things that people spend money on, the values that we assign to things.   

The laptop pictured at the left cost $100. It isn't a great laptop by today's standards, but it is comparable to $2500 computers from 10 years ago.

That is to say, it will do everything you need it to do, slowly.

The other device featured in this post is called a Wiki-Reader. Designed for people who want Wikipedia but don't want, or can't afford, the internet. The concept initially struck me as ludicrous: Wikipedia is fluid, dynamic, changing; that's what makes it great. But it is also a fantastic, if often inaccurate, resource and access to it shouldn't be limited to those who pay their monthly fee to access the internet. I realized that the wiki-reader is probably as close to a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as we will ever see in my lifetime.

That same $100 could buy you a laptop, one album (The Beatles White Album),  two PS3 games, a pair of jeans, or a Wiki-Reader.


Let that sink in, for the cost of a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from Abercrombie and Fitch you could have access to the wealth of uses afforded by a computer, or the cornucopia of information that the Wiki-Reader provides.

Knowledge - Communication - Music - Jeans - Same price across the board.

Flooding

There has been extensive flooding in the area that I live. Several months ago, my girlfriend and I were coming home and our car was washed off the road. For whatever reason, I had both my laptops, and my palm top stowed in that car, as well as two analog SLRs, and lots of other personal effect.

Needless to say, I was left just a bit devastated by all of this. It's been quite an ordeal to try and rebuild everything. I lost several posts that I had been working on, documents and pictures, not to mention the film that was in those cameras.

Data Transfer on an hp 200LX

I Recently acquired an HP 200LX. For those of you too lazy to click the link, The 200LX is a PDA and a PC/XT in one pocket sized case.

It was released in the early 90s, a simpler time, when people had serial ports on their computers. It came with a null modem cable with a special plug for the non standard shape of the serial port, and software to transfer files from DOS, windows 3.X and windows 95.

And for a time things were grand. Windows evolved, as it is notorious for doing, Computers grew up and lost their serial ports, and slowly the little bubble of HP's perfect transfer scheme was breached.

But then, a miracle from the heavens, HP releases Transfile200. A majestic application that works on even the latest incarnations of Redmond's beast, even over USB (or for the adventurous, bluetooth).

Of course this all assumes that you still have the original null-modem cable, or any cable that will plug into the 10 pin slot on the palmtop. I, sadly, do not.

At this point things get interesting. There are three options for file transfer assuming that you don't have the connectivity cable: