Forever Un-cool in Gadget Land

It was a thrill for this chronic late-adopter and used-computer-buyer to finally have his first new computer. I boldly squatted in the parking lot outside the Target where I bought my new 11.6" Acer netbook at the loss-leader price of $200 and brazenly challenged a security guard or parking lot Zamboni to even try to kick me out. Nobody dared.

I stayed up until midnight -- real midnight, as in media noche, as in mitternacht, not motorhome midnight of 9 p.m. -- transitioning to the new netbook. I had always feared doing this but it ended up being fun watching functionality and the software breath-of-life appear on a soul-less machine, step-by-step.

At 530 in the morning I practically leaped out of bed, wondering if Starbucks would waken at 6 am. I didn't have to drive far in New Mexico's megalopolis, Albuquerque, to find one. Soon I was ensconced in a chair next to a personable floor lamp, with a scone and a (disappointing-tasting and over-priced) espresso, and pretended to be a hip urban technorati.

Then my bubble burst. This experience was supposed to be a ceremonial ritual to honor the new netbook; I'd imagined urban sophisticates, with their $5 double foo-foo lattes or whatever and their white iPads, casting furtive glances of envy and lust over towards my new machine. But it was not to be. Apparently a bargain netbook from Target educes the same respect from jaded gadget-sophisticates that an entry-level Toyota Corolla would pull out of a NASCAR gearhead.

Why is the tech media so anti-netbook? They look down on them and give all the glory to tablets. Most tablets do have beautiful, high-resolution displays. Great, so you sit in a coffee shop trying to look enviable, blobbing and gooing your wonderful touch-screen with buttery fingers as you eat your toasted onion bagel. Of course you could squander some money on a protective plastic screen; but what does that do to the crispness of the display? And how long does that plastic cover last? (Gee you don't think that's the whole point, do you?)

I  recently played with an iPad for the first time in a coffee shop in the boutique mountain hamlet of Ouray CO.  My friend, a former IT professional man, surprised me by confessing that he didn't know how to do real, ten-fingered typing. That explains a lot about corporate IT departments as well as the hype and hysteria about touch screens. Although it was fun to play with it for a couple minutes I will remain a clamshell and keyboard man. Something about touchscreens suggests a regression from a second grader to a pre-literate day schooler who expresses himself by finger-painting.

Buying a new gadget has a way of pulling a sucker into a concatenation of expenses the same way that buying a puppy does. ("Honey, just imagine how cyoooot Fi-Fi would look in this darling angora sweater; and it's on sale for only $90!") In fact despite my boast of being a bang-for-the-buck, no nonsense type of consumer, even I went into the big-box gadget pushers the next day and fawned over "accessories." (But I wouldn't have done that if my pride hadn't been wounded at Starbucks.)

There were $80 "genuine leather" protective covers for the iPad at Walmart for gawd's sake! A cynic might have expected that this entire aisle (!) of iPad ecosystem junk was made in China for 50 cents a pop. But apparently it was being made by hand by old world craftsmen of the kind who used to make shoes in Italy or watches in Switzerland. (Youngsters are probably unaware of the panoply of cutesy, expensive add-ons and gotchas that were sold with the Palm Pilot back around year 2000. Isn't it ironic that tablet mania gets so much credit for being "new".)

Still stinging from that morning Starbucks rebuke I turned up my nose at all those over-priced cases, bags, keyboards, ad infinitum, which were supposed to turn your iPad into something more productive than a vending machine for the iTunes store or protect it from a fall from your cream-cheesey fingers onto Starbucks' granite floor -- imported from the Dolomite mountains, you know. (This wasn't too hard; the netbook has an 11.6 inch display, while the iPad accoutrements are made for a 10 inch machine. I measured them just to make sure. Blush.)

Finally I got my rightful revenge: an 11.6 inch netbook is the same size as a standard piece of paper, which is 8.5 by 11 inches; therefore many standard office supplies, even from the kiddie school supply aisle, can be used to store and protect my netbook. I ended up buying a padded mail envelope for a dollar. But it was made of genuine paper and plastic bubbles.