Money Money Money
Friday 21 January 2005

..Must be funny
...In a rich man’s world

Okay it’s post Christmas and New Year ... okay, okay, it’s well past both of those but here’s the thing ... usually at this time of year I am skint. No money except for life’s essentials, spending over the festive period has wiped me out and it’s a little balancing act between income and bills for a month or so.

I’m sure many people are in the same situation as I’m usually in. What’s makes this strange though is that I have money. I have far more money than I should have which made me think I’d missed a couple of bills or so but no, no impending “pay now or we’ll break your thumbs” letters on their way. I have a few hundred quid and ... it needs spending.

I could attempt to save it but I know all that would happen is that I’d spend it on ‘treats’ like magazines, ‘special’ food and other generally consumables. Essentially the money would just be frittered away on stuff and that’s just no good; it needs to be spent on something I can look at in a few months time and think “Damn, why did I waste money on that?”.

So I’m looking for a gadget, but what? Could get something for the PC but I really need nothing for either of them, nothing I can think of anyway.

I could buy a Mac Mini because it looks sooooo cute! But no.

Current thinking based on nothing else coming to mind is an mp3 player. I don’t need one but it would be nice for trips and I could also use it as a standalone device for playing music at home. Unfortunately there is waaay too much choice and I’m not getting any closer to owning any. A lot of them have annoying UI quirks, the iPod has the battery thing, so one I was looking at had a nice replaceable battery and was a 5GB model but then I started thinking “I can get a 20GB model for the same price” and I’m back at square one. Gaah!

Help me spend my money (no not on you!).

Bowch United Kingdom wrote:

Sky+ with Multiroom is only ?150 at the moment; I just ordered it myself…

Or how about a holiday somewhere?

Or maybe a Nintendo DS?

Graphics Tablet for Scruff?

Or maybe just put it in the bank and gain some interest before spending it in Blackpool..

01.23.05 09:12 PM


PickledPixie United Kingdom wrote:

I own the Sky subscription and have the remote linkup thing so I have no need for multiroom and it would involve an extra ?10 a month. If I spend now I don’t want that spending to involve extra spending monthly.

Holidays - pfft

Nintendo DS - hmm, I’m not excited about it at all, it’s not due out here until March anyway (Same as Sony PSP).

Scruff is ... better watch what I say here because he can read this ... a gi.. already has a graphics tablet (I assume anyway smile ).

It would be spent if put in the bank (well taken out first...) and would make me feel like I had spent the money without actually having spent it and that doesn’t give me a short term high smile.

01.24.05 12:16 PM


United Kingdom wrote:

All Apple Macs are the spawn of Satan!!! smile

The iPod isn’t much better if used with iMusic and all the DRM that goes with it. Apple are also doing their best to stop it playing music from other legal online music sites which use DRM, though that isn’t a problem if you only play MP3s (either ones you’ve ripped from your own CDs, or illegally downloaded). Another problem is that it doesn’t play OGG encoded music, which admittedly is used by far fewer people than the ancient MP3 standard, but is something I at least would look for. I’m also unconvinced of the need for hard-drive versions over smaller and lighter 1GB flash players (or the 2GB flash versions starting to appear); do you really need to take your entire music collection with you all the time? After all 1GB is enough for 12 hours of music at a generous 192kbps, and somewhat more at a lower bitrate.

The DS looks quite promising to me, certainly a better portable game system than the Sony PSP movie-player device that can also play games (until it breaks). The DS is selling in the US for $149 so I guess it will be ?99 when it gets here, which is pretty cheap but a few games should bump up the price to the amount you want to spend. It also plays GBA games which is a plus, especially as DS games are a bit thin on the ground still.

I guess it depends on what sort of things you’re into. You might like one of those smartphone thingies, or a DV camera, etc… or you could just blow the lot on lottery tickets or Infinium Labs Phantom game console shares smile

01.24.05 06:35 PM


PickledPixie United Kingdom wrote:

Do you need to take your entire music collection along with you? Maybe not but why would someone not want to? Why limit your choice? That just seems mindboggling stupid to me. It’s not about “I can get x hours of music”, it’s more “I can have a choice of every variety of musical style I like to choose from”. That’s just me though, others might be happy to limit themselves.

Based on past products, the DS might be seen here at ?149 because they always tend to go for straight $1=?1 conversion but we’ll see. The DS doesn’t have an analogue control which is a major flaw, the touchscreen isn’t as responsive for games which require analogue control (as shown by the pseudo-port of Mario 64) and thus seems gimmicky to me.

I have a GBA SP anyway and that’s all the portable gaming system I need. Nothing on either of the two handhelds wows me.

I could just spend my money on “Ale and Whores” smile

01.26.05 11:20 AM


United Kingdom wrote:

Anyone stupid enough to buy prescription drugs online deserves all they get.

02.17.05 12:15 AM



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