New Year Purchases

Since I lost most of my gadgetry I had to start shopping and play catch up. This year I also ventured a step further into my paid digital world. More on that later.

For starters, (thankfully) my office replaced the laptop since it was insured. But it took me a while to get all that data back. Also for a change I downgraded from Vista to XP (and am I glad!). In fact I will post about it some time later.

Second on the list was the iPod. I got my self the Classic iPod 80 GB from Heera Panna. Ironically the premium for picking up the laptop from Heera Panna is down to a measly $22 (Rs. 880) which is a steal from the official price from Apple India which is nearly 75% of the original cost in US$. I had the 60 GB earlier which was much thicker than the 30GB which was also available. The new 80GB is now the lighter option (God knows what'll happen in another 2/3 years). The interface is much slicker and so is the entire body. Since both iPods that I lost earlier were white, I bought the black iPod hoping to change my luck with iPods.

Fortunately the black iPod fits like a glove on the iVoice iPod speakers I got as a hand-me-down gift from an office colleage. The iVoice sound is pretty cool & it comes with a remote as well which handles basic iPod functionalities. Since it works only with an iPod & given that my colleague doesn't own one & is also not into music much, I was more than happy to take it. We used it recently at a picnic and it was wonderful.

Next on the list was a camera. I was going to stick to my Panasonic Lumix which I lost but I was seriously recommended the Canon IXUS 750 (also called the PowerShot 750 and I haven't been disappointed. The quality of snaps is wonderful but I am still to get to know all the features since there are quite a few and I haven't yet got down to reading the manual. An excellent review is here.

That pretty much ended my real world shopping list. There's still a laptop bag & glares left on the list which my wife has promised to buy. We plan to stock up on that some time next week.

On my paid digital world I upped the ante a little bit. Firstly I went & purchased the license for MultiNetworkManager 9.0. I have used a cracked version of this on my Sony Vaio. Its a boon for roaming laptop users. I travel to many of our offices and setting multiple IP's, proxies & printers really gets my goat. I was missing this on Vista and since I downgraded to XP, I bought a the license for @ $29. And now I am a happy man.

This morning I purchased a PRO account on Flickr. I have been toying with it for quite a few months last year. Though I have been a Picasa Web Albums fan I thought that the features on Flickr are way too amazing and hence the decision. Another trigger was that I had not discovered any site which allowed unlimited storage of photos. I know that Zooomr does, but the features are just elementary. And since I lost a few precious snaps when I lost my laptop I decided to back up my photos online. A Flickr pro account does just that. I am just about uploading my photos, so will post a few once I have managed them online.

So there we go. Quite a bit of shopping for the New Year