7 Deadly sins

But it only takes one to bring you down.

This will be a long post - I need to get this off my chest.

Here I stand, a victim of one of the 7 deadly sins. In my case it was lust.

Now, before you go thinking the worst of me, let me say that the only person really harmed in this debacle of which I speak is me and the only person to blame for it is me.

For anyone who knows me well, and I will be the first to admit I have friends and readers out in the blogosphere who only know me from my Internet presence, we are talking about the lust of gadgets and not of the flesh variety. [Should my mother ever be reading this (however unlikely) I would add that I don't really know what the fleshly variety of lust is and must have heard the phrase when in bad company or something].

Here follows a tale of lust and maybe even a little greed. You may not think such a thing will happen to you and I hope it doesn't but I will reveal my story all the same for the edification of you all and the public embarrassment that I am hoping will teach me a lesson I won't ignore.

Cathy, my gorgeous wife, agreed that I could invest in a new computer. While a large purchase like this will stretch the domestic budget for a few months, I am finding myself hampered when it comes to doing somethings that can only be done on a screen larger than my 3.5 inch Axim x51v. (The laptop I have from work is 5 years old, for the technical it's a PIII 600Mhz Samsung that just runs XP Professional and is starting to fail and we are a charity with 1 year left of funding and not in a position to kit out with new gear now). I will soon have to think about my future career prospects (i.e. where I might be working after March 2008) and the ability to keep up with newer technology and to have it available to use in my searching (and my 20 week Open University course) will be a boon.

I went to eBay as I knew early on that I could not afford to buy one of the latest laptops. For over a week I poured over laptop configurations and matched my current and future needs. I then placed carefully crafted bids on a particular M200 tablet, things got exciting towards the end and i was swept up in the bidding, missing out by £2 ($4) on my last bid and 30 seconds to go; as anyone who has been to an auction you may as well have lost by £1,000,000 ($2,000,000) if you come second. A flurry of other tablets came and went, all slipping out of my grip as I decided on a maximum figure and kept to it. A comment on a Thinkpad item brought me up short as it suggested that Dabs.com had the Lenovo Thinkpad x41 on sale for £650 ($1,300).

I checked the Dabs website and saw the x41 for even less at £550 ($1,100). That was the one for me I thought, it had a 3 year warranty and was less than similar second hand items on eBay that were coming with 2 year warranties. I went off on the web doing my final pre-buying checks and decided to have a final glimpse of eBay.

This was the eginning of the end. I couldn't believe my eyes, I saw a Thinkpad x60s for auction and only around £500 ($1,000) - I began lusting. I decided it was too good an opportunity to miss, so I did a surf to check out the specifications, prices and reviews prior to bidding. Amongst other refences I read great reviews of the pre-production model x60(or whatever the phrase is for the version released to reviewers just before it's produced for retail). My lust for this object blinded me to the fact that it did not say tablet in it's description, it said Notebook and my brain helpfully (NOT) added the word tablet; after all, many of the supplier websites of new x60 Thinkpads had them in the tablets in the Notebook section was my addled thinking.

You will have surmised already that I did ended up winning (this term always strikes me as a little odd) a Notebook version x60s and not the Tablet version x60 I so much wanted.

The word of the day has to be SCOTOMA as I learned from Lou Tice on (IMHO) the brilliant Investors in Excellence course. I could not see what was before me as I wanted so much for the Thinkpad x60s to be the improved x41 at a bargain price, I totally missed the absolutely clear description and picture on the sellers page that clearly laid out that it was a Notebook.

Today I know so well the adage, There are none so blind as those who will not see.

I have options and my brain is screaming for me to get the new x41 and just sell the x60s I have just won and paid for on eBay, but I will take the weekend to mindmap my options and then give the new (to me) notebook when it arrives. At least this has made me look at my options and actually think about what I will use it for and how much of the tablet side is desire and how much actual use.


For me the wake up call to start actually thinking first and not just reacting is almost worth the money - more on this when the laptop arrives.