In the Parlance of Our Times

Over at TechNOcool, James writes about the urge to pick up a $200 computer at Wal-mart. While a $200 linux-based machine doesn't do it for me, I do understand his feelings. I have my own technology longing at the moment: to own one of the so-called $100 laptops created by the One Laptop Per Child project.

If I don't control myself in the next few weeks, one of these babies could end up on my doorstep by Christmas. Beginning November 12, and for just two weeks, we will all have the opportunity to spend $400 to donate one of these laptops to a developing country and at the same time receive one for ourselves, by way of the Give 1 Get 1 promotion.

The donate part you can do at any time, for $200. But for two weeks only you can pay an additional $200 to donate one of these to yourself.

I'm unreasonably attracted to this. I know that I'll probably never use the laptop, but I want one. Bad. It would just be cool to have.

I'm going to control myself, though. It's like the time in 1988 that Michael and I went shopping for a cassette deck for the Escort. We'd been in the country for a year, and had made a lot of purchases in that time - some a necessary part of relocating, some not so necessary. We were about to close the deal on the cassette deck when we were struck by the feeling that the spending was never going to stop. We needed to NOT buy something we wanted - really wanted - to prove to ourselves we could do it. So we walked out of the store, and for the 13 years we owned that car we never bought a cassette deck for it.

I can do this. I can NOT buy this laptop. Just watch.

A month or two back, when the Give 1 Get 1 promotion was first announced and before my newfound resolve to control unreasonable technology urges, I signed up to get an email reminding me when it was time to participate in the program.

The first such reminder turned up in my inbox yesterday. I should have just deleted it right away. But I didn't. I read it. And guess what? T-mobile is donating a year's free access to any of it's wireless locations to everyone who participates. And not just for connecting the OLPC laptop. No, you can use this access for any wireless device. Like the iPhone, for instance.

So not only am I giving up my one-chance-in-a-lifetime to own one of these sweet OLPC laptops, I'm giving up a years free wireless access for my iPhone at tons of locations.

This better be buying me some serious points somewhere.

It happens eventually to every wildly successful product - the product name becomes synonymous with other products in the same category. So all tissues are Kleenex, all copiers are Xeroxes and so on. Until now, though, iPod seemed to mean only iPod. If someone called a non-Apple mp3 player an iPod they'd have been looked upon sadly by those in the know.

Until now. Today's New York Times Bits blog has a post titled Amazon Pitches a Wireless iPod for Books. I clicked the link to see what this was all about. Reading books on the iPod Touch maybe? No, the word iPod was being used in a very generic sense - not as mp3 player so much as handheld wireless device.

When your grandchildren ask you some day why a whole class of handheld devices are called iPods, you can tell them that it all started on a dark and stormy night in November 2007.

I realized today that I'd made it through the two weeks of the Give 1 Get 1 laptop promotion. The addition of a year's free T-mobile HotSpot access - valued at $350 - made it hard. For $400 you get one of these cool laptops, $350 worth of T-mobile HotSpot access and another laptop gets donated. What's not to like about this? But in the interest of cutting down on unnecessary technology spending I had decided not to participate in this program.

Today I went to the Give 1 Get 1 web site to see if there was any information about how many laptops were donated during the two week period. Instead what I saw was that the program has been extended until December 31, 2007!

I think I've shown remarkable restraint up to now. But all bets are off from here on in.