Tuesday 9 December 2003

Pic of the day: "Let us all protect our precious heads." Picture from inspirational anime Bottle Fairy, episode 7.

White desire

It takes a bit to turn my head these days. But each lunch break for some workdays now I have gone to this particular place to look at a white beauty. I have been used to them being black, or at least very dark. This is really the first white one I have seen around here, and I was amazed that it made such a difference to me. I felt an unexpected and irrational desire along with the admiration of undeniable beauty. I might have acted on that desire outright, had not all my needs been filled at home by my trusty black companion. You really don't need two laptops when you have only one lap.

Yes, indeed. The beautiful sight that I have admired for the last few lunch breaks is a white laptop PC from Packard Bell. Not only is it innocent white all over, with semi-translucent key caps; it also has both USB 2.0 and FireWire, and a memory card reader that can read (and presumably write) four different formats. All these things are certified nifty, even though I don't need any of them (except USB, and I have plenty of that on my current computers). I do indeed plan to move to FireWire in the future, if any: USB is nice when you have a couple of peripherals, but when you have half a dozen of them you suddenly need a hub. With FireWire you can supposedly just chain them one after another. Of course, by the time I have amassed a reasonable number of FireWire peripherals, Bluetooth will be the standard and I will wonder why I didn't think of that at once...

One reason why I haven't bought the beautiful Packard Bell laptop (aside from the fact that I don't need it, and since when has that stopped any of us anyway?) is the price. It is not so expensive that I could not easily afford it, these days. But it is still noticeably more pricey than the Hewlett-Packard laptop standing right next to it. That is just so wrong! Yes, the Packard Bell has a bit more bells and whistles, as it were. But still: Hewlett-Packard is the Mercedes-Benz of computers. People won't turn their heads and walk into lamp posts at the sight of one, but they will realize that you have a sense of quality and class. In contrast, Packard Bell is like Fiat (only with a different country of origin). Sure, there are plenty of good things to say about it; but you have to say them yourself, and people with still silently pity you when you leave...

So if I get enough sleep, or even nearly enough sleep, I will probably not buy the beautiful laptop. Instead I will watch and wait, hoping for beauty to spread to competing brands. And even then, there has to be some decisive advantage over the computers I already have. Otherwise I might as well waste the money on food and bills!