$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.

Palm Pre, iPhone, Android. Oh My! (smart phone extravaganza)

Today, we discuss the up-and-coming smartphone technologies, and how they compare to the established giants.

For many years the smartphone market has been dominated by two players, Blackberry and Windows Mobile.

Though Blackberry has enjoyed much success, Blackberry's newest offering, the Storm, has been widely panned by critics and users alike as being a rather ill-conceived mess. The same has been said about nearly all Windows mobile phones.

And so people were left with two options, neither of which offered much freedom.

Then, in a flurry of activity, several things happened at once:

• The iPhone was launched. It is a sleek, hip, net-enabled smartphone. On the surface, it appears to be everything anyone could ever want. But, it is tied to a proprietary app store, and requires iTunes to work. (And that leaves us linux dorks out on our butts.)
  
• Google announced Android. Android isn't a phone, but rather an operating system for phones, a free, Linux-based replacement for Windows Mobile. The only phone with Android on the market today is the G1 from T-Mobile. But oh, what a phone it is.
  
• Palm, rising from the ashes of five years with only one new product, announces the Palm Pre, boasting a new and improved Web OS. And, though Web OS isn't compatible with older Palm apps, it looks promising.