Very happy, but oh so weak.
I had to go shopping last Saturday (the 31st of January). I needed a new Firewire hard drive so I’d be able to edit all the video I’d shot in Japan. (And any future stuff I’d shoot in Korea or elsewhere.) Plus, I needed it to back up my old iBook so I could safely reformat its drive and sell it.
No better place to shop for such a thing in Seoul than Yongsan, the big electronics district. I hopped the train up there and knew exactly where I needed to go. Scored a 120GB drive and Firewire/USB case to go with it. Decent price, about 220,000 won. Far cheaper than if I’d bought one at the Apple store in Ginza, that’s for sure.
Speaking of the Apple store, my next stop was the little one a couple blocks away. I needed a Firewire hub, since now I had two drives plus my camcorder – and only one port on the iBook. The new drive has a pass-though, but that’ll only allow me to connect the drive and one other thing at a time. I got to the Apple store and they didn’t have any hubs. Bummer. They did have iPods though. I’ve always been a member (and still am to a certain extent) of the camp that iPods are for people with more money than sense.
$300 to play music? You must be kidding!
(Here’s where the weakness part comes in.)They were on sale.Well, one of them was. They’d marked down the 10GB model since the new “low end” player was going to be the 15GB one, and it was going to be selling for the same price as the 10GB model had. I’ve only got about 6 gigs of MP3s, so a 10 is perfect for me. Never mind that it was still $280, and that I don’t even use my MP3/CD player that much (which cost me $45).
It’s an iPod! And it’s on sale!
ahemIt was a good deal. I’d been looking forward to the new iPod mini, but at $250 for 4 gigs that hardly seemed like a good deal to me. Add on sales tax in Washington state and the price is up to about $272. Definitely not a good deal. But in Korea there’s no sales tax. And I’d be getting 2.5 times the capacity for $8 more! (Not that I’d have spent the $272 in the first place, but to a crazed geek in a tech store that’s an irrelevant point.)
Wallet in hand I hurried over to the ATM (conveniently located right across from the Apple store) and took out the needed funds. Money spent and iPod bagged, I headed back to the subway. After getting home and putting the iPod through its paces, I have to say, it’s one kickass piece of tech. I still think they cost too much, but obviously not so much that it kept me from buying one. Clearly, I had more money than sense. I should never, ever go to the electronics market the day after payday.
(I never did find a Firewire hub, either. Now I really need one, since the iPod’s a Firewire device too!)