Aliya S. King

I am going through a serious case of technolust right now. You know how you look at your cell phone and you’re just over it? You go to Best Buy and see all the new joints and you hold them and caress them and think about getting a second job so you can cop it?

Okay, maybe that’s just me.

Every once in a while, I get this intense want-it-now feeling about gadgets. Here’s what I want:

It’s the one gadget that everyone in my house wants. TG is the oldest grandchild with not two but three sets of grandparents, including my parents. So she’s a spoiled brat with every game console known to man. But it’s a pain to transport them back and forth from her mom’s house to our house. So our house is game-free. This is the only joint she doesn’t have–and she’s salivating. I want it to so that I can buy some Wii Fit games. That’s the only thing stopping me from getting my bikini-body back. [Insert eye-roll here]

Also, my 12 year old nephew lives a half-mile away and he wanders over to see TH at least three times a day every Saturday. They’d both love it.

I need a Wii in my life! I have no idea how much these things cost. Five hundred? How much are the games? No clue. I just know I want one.

But alas. TH and I have enacted a super tight budget. We get 150.00 per month on the first of each month. We’d both have to forgo everything for more than a month in order to cop this. It ain’t gonna happen.

Sigh.

I also want to upgrade my phone in the worst way.

I’ve had this joint for about two years now….

It’s totally fine. Gets the job done. But since I’ve started blogging, it’s fallen short. First, it has no camera. Which drives me crazy. Remember when I did Blogorama? I had to take my digital camera. And everytime I posted, I had to download the pictures into my laptop, download them, resize them if necessary and then insert into the post. Yuck! If I had a phone with a camera, I’d blog even more. And I’d Tweet more if I could upload pics directly from my phone.

And I also don’t feel like I get the most out of my Internet browser. Takes forever for pages to load, the screen is small. There’s no GPS. And I can’t get a lot of those apps that I hear about with that you-know-what phone:

Cue O Fortuna here. Because that’s what I heard in my head when the Iphone was first introduced. I was locked into a new contract with Sprint at the time so it was out of the question for me. TH copped it. And I was so jealous. When he charged it at night, I would pick it up and just hold it. So cool. So sleek. So smooth.

What I love most about the I-phone is that you can watch video on it. My Blackberry does not allow me to watch YouTube or any other video content. Boo! I also love love love the camera on the i-phone. Tons of pictures right here on this blog came from TH’s trusty I-phone.

He’s got Pandora on there! He can listen to the radio on his phone. So not fair. Not fair at all.

The one thing I don’t like is the touch screen typing. I’m a BlackBerry thumb-pro. I stink at manipulating the touch screen. People say you get used to it. But I’m not sure I would.

My contract with Sprint is up in November. If I got a line added on to TH’s plan, we’d save quite a bit of money each month. Having an added line on his plan would only be 9.99 a month! And then, I’d have to get a new phone….

Last but not least, this gadget makes me want to knock someone over in the street and do a snatch and grab when I see ’em.

It’s the new Amazon Kindle II.

You can read newspapers on it. And books–thousands and thousands of books. And I want it.

I mentioned it on Twitter and someone said that they loved the feel of paper too much to get into the Kindle.

I love paper too. And I love the feel of a weighty book in my hands.

The Kindle would just be an extension of my book life. It wouldn’t replace it. I’d still buy hardcovers, (or rather, borrow from the library). And of course, when my own novel is published, I’ll be a hot crying mess when I see its finished form in my hands.

But I love the idea of reading the paper on the Kindle. I can’t read the New York Times online. I just never got into it. But I also hate newsprint. And reading a newspaper on the train is a pain.

When I’m traveling, my books weigh down my luggage more than my shoes. (Seriously, a few weeks ago I went to Florida for the weekend. I had to pare down my shoes to just two pair so I could fit in more books.)

With a Kindle, I could transport books so much easier.

And one day, if they find a way to borrow digital versions of books in libraries, it would be so awesome to not have to trek the library to pick up and return hardcovers.

On the flight to Florida, I was sitting next to a woman who was reading a novel on The Kindle. I found myself casing her. She was at least 10 years older than me. If I snatched it and dashed off the plane, would she be able to catch me? Probably not.

Okay, so I wouldn’t really Kindle-jack someone. But my eyes were Badu-green with envy as I saw her flicking the pages with her pointer finger. Meanwhile, my ink-stained fingers were thumbing through a newspaper, with a bulging tote bag full of books at my feet.

But then. The plane prepared for takeoff. And they made the announcement that all electronic devices had to be turned off. Home girl next to me kept flicking through her novel. The flight attended came over.

“You have to turn that off,” she said, pointing to the Kindle.

“Oh,” the woman said. She made a face, sighed. And turned it off.

Thirty minutes later, we still hadn’t taken off. I was deep in my book, loving it. And home girl was sitting there, staring at the seat in front of her, throwing a longing look at my stack of magazines. I offered her one of my wrinkled, dog-eared tabloids.  And she happily accepted.

dear readers: Should we throw our budget to the wind and get a Wii? Do you have one? Do you love it? What about the i-phone? Should I get that when my contract is up? Or is there a Blackberry out there that suits my new needs? And does anyone have a Kindle. Is it the most awesomest thing ever?

I’d love to hear from you…

P.S. Tonight, 8PM. Check me out on Twitter! The weekly TweetChat is on! For details, click HERE.

This entry was posted on June 1, 2009 at 9:55 am and is filed under Technolust. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.