The Cackling Hen will soon be blogging on the road, but no road is hospitable to my current word processor - a three-year-old laptop that's been through many surgeries. It is constantly hooked up to a noisy respirator (aka cooling fan since it's always hot and bothered) and I refuse to test the demanding function of folding down the screen. If it goes black again, I fear it will never come back.
I decided to research netbooks as an affordable, portable and down-right cute option to use the interwebs. I was happy to find that I could get the same storage capacity in a netbook as my current HP on life support for a fraction of the price. But just as I went to purchase the netbook I wanted, I learned netbooks are
out. Fail.
Small box in hand, I told the Best Buy associate what I wanted. He told me I didn't want it. (I'm sorry, we just met, sir.) I then told Ricardo exactly what I'd be doing, what I wanted to get out of the netbook and why I wanted it. He kept looking at me like I had found the lone cassette player for sale in the store.
Apparently I want a tablet. If Ricardo knows what I want better than I do, I wonder if he knew in which moment I wanted to leave the store. He poked and swiped at apps and Angry Birds on various tablets as we explored the array of options, prices and sizes with more docking and port options than Royal Caribbean. The "bare bones" model with a name I couldn't pronounce was priced higher than the netbook, and anything functional for me within my vocabulary was even more. The trip to Best Buy left me with more questions than answers, and the netbook stayed in its dusty corner.
There are pros and cons to both the tablet and netbook, but the new dilemma left me with more questions about myself and technology. As a freshly-turned 26 year old, am I already getting outsmarted by machines and things that make our lives "easier."
Evidence I'm a technological geriatric:
- I buy physical CDs of my favorite artists whenever possible
- I make at least one new mix CD per month in spite of owning an iPod.
- I don't want an e-reader. I want everyone around me to know what book I'm reading.
- I keep my schedule "planner style" like in high school.
Evidence I'm still with it:
- I have a smart phone.
- I don't own any cassettes.
Identity crisis aside, is anyone else as intuitive as Ricardo? My master's degree is not in computer science or thinking for myself. Please, tell me what I want.
Well, I'm more technologically challenged than you so my two cents are all but worthless. I find it hilarious that your computer is always hot and bothered though. LOL Mine is like a grumpy teenager: if I give it too much to do it sighs heavily and does it at an impossibly slow pace, as if to spite me.
ReplyDelete