The Clueless' Guide to Buying New Gadgets

This is the time of year when a lot of people has some surplus of disposable income. Some of those people (including me) will be buying some gadgets to add to their arsenal. I've already decided to get a Treo 650 Smartphone soon. Why would I get an "ageing" smartphone model? Well, I'm just following these tips I've been dishing out to people who askme whether to buy their gadget now or wait:

Question: I need a laptop nowbut I'm afraid that a new model will come out soon rendering my purchase obsolete, should I buy now?

Answer: If you need it now and you already have themoney to buy it, buy it now. There's no sense in waiting for the "nextbest thing". New technology comes out almost daily but it does not necessarily mean that they are immediately available for sale. Besides, that new model you are looking at may cost more than your budget.

Question: A new cellphone (orPDA or laptop or mp3 player) has just been released, should I buy it now?

Answer: Refer to the previous answer.Otherwise, think about the product you are planning to get. I personally shy away from "version 1" products or products that comes out the factory the first time. More often than not, there are issues that may have yet to be discovered on them and the early adopter susually "suffer" the consequences. Take for example the problems that plagued the first few thousand units of the Treo 600 regarding its memory allocation. The problem causes the files in the Treo to occupy more space than they ought to. So Palm offered free memory cards to the people affected by this and it took them months to finally release apatch to fix the core of the problem. People who bought units later were not affected by the problem. These kind of thing may also happen to cellphones, laptops and to some degree, MP3 players.

Question: Nokia (or Ericsson, or IBM, or Palm, or HP) will be releasing their latest offering two months from now but the product is already available at Greenhills, should I get it now?

Answer: In this case, it is more prudent to wait for the official local release of the gadget you want to buy. More often than not, these gadgets costs quite a bundle and it is worth to get them from authorized local dealers so that you can at least be protected by local warranty in case something goes wrong with your purchased gadget.

Question: I heard that its cheaper to get a laptop (or cellphone, or PDA, or MP3 Player) in Hong Kong (or any other foreign country), should I buy from there?

Answer: *SOME* gadgets are indeed cheaper when bought overseas but you'll have to consider a lot of things before taking the plunge. Is international warranty available for it? If anything goes wrong with it, can it be serviced/repaired locally? Is it compatible with local power or will it need an adaptor or (heaven forbid) a transformer? Sometimes, the hassle that goes with a gadget bought from overseas can outweigh the 'savings' gained.

Now for an explanation of why I'll be buying an ageing smartphone. I will get a Treo 650 because this model is already mature. The firmware has already been updated several times and most of the bugs of the unit has already been identified and a lot of them are already fixed. The price has already gone down and even this "late" I can still get a full year's warranty for it.