I have bought a lot of stuff [some were also gifts] over the holidays. Earning from my writing at 20+ sure enhanced some serious purchasing power, well, at least enough to buy most of the gadgets in my wish list. Oh, and I completed my SOTA Street Fighter action figures. More on those later.
I have always been a gadget freak. Well, gadget superfreak, actually. [Nick Cage used to call himself a “Chemical Superfreak” in the movie “The Rock”]. However, it was only recently that portability and compact gadgets caught my eye and attention. Before I was diagnosed with ESRD, I was never really fond of portable or compact stuff. But since I am at the hospital for dialysis 3 times a week, the need to be able to carry all the stuff I need with minimal space and effort became something to consider. And buying T3 magazine every month didn’t help either. I always saw the latest gadgets and realized, I just had to have them!
PICTURED ABOVE: my ASUS EEE mini laptop. A Chinese Xmas present from my auntie. Ever since TJ Manotoc featured this on TV Patrol as a laptop for only about P15,000, it’s been the fastest selling mini-laptop out there. Stocks were depleted during xmas and I had to wait til February for Complink to replenish their stock. Mine is upgraded, the memory was upsized and maxxed out to 1GB. It’s got everything you need to do minor stuff outside. Complete internet stuff like browsing, chatting, it’s got a modem port, lan port, usb port, vga out, a webcam, and best of all, all of my video files play on it with no additional programs or codecs needed. It’s so small, nobody suspects you are carrying a laptop. It’s perfect if I want to write a few scripts at dialysis or just watch videos. I use it with my 4 GB flash drive and 160 GB external hard disk [more on those below].
PICTURED ABOVE: my PQI 4GB USB flash drive. I bought this from CDR King a long time ago, back when 4 GB was the biggest flash drive around. Now there are 16 GB flash drives but they are still too expensive. Besides, why get a 16 GB when you can get a 160 GB for just a little more?
PICTURED ABOVE: my old HP 2MP digicam bought for me by my friend John and brought home when he came to visit from the
SAME WHAT, DIFFERENT WHEN…
PICTURED ABOVE: my Nikon Coolpix L15. an 8 MP point and shoot courtesy of my cousin Erika. I am still getting the hang of using it, but it was so easy to use, it didn't really take too long. Came with a 512 MB SD card. The manual says it can use one as big as 4 GB. I am thinking of buying a 4 GB for it so I can shoot longer video clips. Yes, it has video. The weird thing is that it doesn’t have a viewfinder and uses only 2 AA batteries.
PICTURED ABOVE: continuous ink system. My uncle bought this attachment for his monstrosity, a printer/scanner/copier machine that he keeps hooked to my computer. With this baby, all I have to do is buy ink by the bulk and save a bundle. Loading the paper into the printer is still a hassle though, especially when it jams!
PICTURED ABOVE: Maxtor One Touch Plus 500 GB external harddrive. My cousin Erika bought this for me along with the digicam. She said there was a sale on these things in the States so she bought me one. At first, I thought it was a portable one, then when I saw how big it literally was, I realized I won’t be lugging this around. It’s stays permanently attached to my computer. And now for the portable one…
PICTURED ABOVE: my Western Digital Passport 160 GB USB external harddrive. This thing is just as big as a wallet. I can plug it into my DVD player and most of the torrents play fine, except for the ones where the codecs used were too new. Still, this is a welcome accessory to my mini-laptop, making it easy for me to bring a ton of stuff to watch when I am outside.
PICTURED ABOVE: my Western Digital Passport 160 GB USB external harddrive, out of the packaging. And what the DVD player can't play, this will help...
PICTURED ABOVE: CDR KING PC TO TV SIGNAL CONVERTER. Plugged to the VGA port of my ASUS mini-laptop, I can now use my TV as a huge computer monitor! This is perfect to watch those torrents that are in formats not recognized by my DVD player. The added use is if I need to convert such formats to DVD, I can just plug it to my DVD recorder and convert the videos in real time. It’s not something that I will be using all the time, but it’s a handy tool that most people overlook.
PICTURED ABOVE: my wireless controller for the Playstation 2. I have been so annoyed by Ps2 games that wont let me use my old HORI fighter stick just because it doesn’t have the analog or dual shock knobs [which I never use anyway]. The reason why I use the HORI is because it has auto-fire buttons which enable me to just hold down the button while the controller repeatedly presses it. It gives me a huge advantage with shooting games where you have to repeatedly press the buttons to keep firing. With this controller, I have the ease of turbo-fire and hassle-free wireless gaming.
PICTURED ABOVE: my Creative Muvo 1 GB MP3 player. It also doubles as a flash drive. Bought by my Aunt Rachel when she was staying in
NO PICTURES: I upgraded my PC’s memory to the maximum, it is now running on 2 GB of PC400 DDR2 RAM. Dual core on crystal meth? Can you picture that?
The only thing left I haven’t bought a new one of is a cellular phone, but I am not in a hurry to have a new one. Something about a new phone ticks me off… having to learn how to use it and losing the comfort of a phone that works just fine and that I have been using for more than a year. Nah, I’ll keep mine…
Another gadget I am thinking of getting is the Sony Playstation 3, but since Tekken 6 isnt even out yet, I have been putting it off.
