Keeping Up with the Latest

There was a copy of a file that I needed; however, it was stored in a 3.5 floppy disk which I had kept for ages in a drawer. I asked my son if his PC had a floppy drive and he looked at me and said "what????" After I explained what I needed to him, a glimmer of recognition dawned in his eyes and he said "Oh, those square things". He lives in a world of rewritable CDs and flash drives. I do not think he even knows what a zip drive is. I checked my IBM work laptop, and the Sony VAIO laptop we have for home use. Both had none. I had never even noticed that they did not come standard anymore. Probably because people no longer use them.

I remember my first PC. It was a year after I started working so I was able to purchase one even though they were quite pricey. The monitor was monochrome and the PC only had DOS installed. I mainly used it for Word Processing (does anyone remember WordStar) and the only game that came with it was a ball that went up and down that I would prevent from falling by moving my navigational arrows. The disk drive that came with it were for the 5.25 floppies that were normally formatted for a measly 360K. I was so excited when Windows came out. When CD ROM drives first came out, I went out and bought one so we could install it on my PC. Of course now they come standard. Over the years, I have been the proud owner of many PCs just because there is the feeling that the newest technology is always better. What if I needed that extra gig of storage?

I am in the same situation with digital cameras. We keep on switching ours for ones with a higher resolution. Since I very seldom have the pictures printed, and I do not look any thinner in the ones taken with the latest one, I sometimes wonder why we do so. When the iPod first came out, it was just a music player that I lusted after. When the iPod Video came out, I of course felt cheated, so I had to go out and buy it. Where else would I put my home movies that I could now convert with my Cucusoft converter? This way I could bore everyone by forcing them to watch. Now I envy the iPod nano which my husband has because it is more convenient in size. My son will barely let me touch his iPhone. I do not want one, I just want to play with it sometimes.

What about the cellular phone? A friend of mine gave me one that has a 3.2 megapixel camera. I could access the Internet through hopping on an unsecured wireless hotspot or subscribe to 3G service. I can upgrade the storage space and keep my music, pictures, and videos in it as well. It has this fancy stylus pen that I could use to write. That way, I can access my oh-so-important social networking page and update my status. Oh, I forgot, I can also use it to make and receive phone calls. As a result, I have a couple of "old" phones laying around somewhere that have been discarded to make way for this beautiful thing.

They call compulsive shoppers shopaholics. There should be a name for those of us who constantly want the latest and greatest gadgets. Let me volunteer one - a marketer's dream!