When I heard something on TV about getting an Phone for $50, I thought about the people I know who paid $600 for theirs. I am not an early adopter of new technology (unless it is free, of course), since I am old enough to remember Betamax. You might have to look that one up, since it is not on the list of the 15 Biggest Fails for Techies Who Bought the Wrong Gear Too Early. This is a slide show of things you may regret having bought when they first came on the market, because the price dropped, it became obsolete, or you can't upgrade the early models. Shown is the Amazon Kindle.
Maybe one day I will get around to buying one. Link -via Interesting Pile
The Kindle's transformation from luxury gadget to impulse buy isn't based on a single moment but rather on a series of price drops that broke the hearts of early adopters. If you bought a Kindle 2 in February 2009, it cost $359. Five months later, $299. Three months after that, $259. By June 2010, the Kindle 2 cost $189--and if you thought that was a good time to pull the trigger, July brought word of the Kindle 3, including a Wi-Fi model for $139. In less than a year and a half, the Kindle had become thinner, lighter, and $220 cheaper.
Maybe one day I will get around to buying one. Link -via Interesting Pile
If you renew a $144 device in a year, or a $576 device in four years, you are operating on $12/month amortizations also.
It would have been a much more interesting article if it were about tech items that were awesome on release date and got awesomer over time.
And for the ones that bought it before, I just can quote Nelson, the bullying guy from The Simpsons: HA-HA!