Well, it's like this...

[chipotle]

...after work, I decided to go to the Palo Alto Apple Store for the "Night of the Panther" event they were holding for the release of the new OS X. (For those of you who not only aren't Apple users but have been successfully hiding from tech news for months, the code name of the release is "Panther.") And I saw that they were having two specials: if you bought Panther, you'd get 10% off anything in the store; if you bought a computer, you'd get 10% off it. (And anything you bought with it.)

So after waffling for the entire four hours of the event--all of them, right up until midnight--I bought a G5.

People sometimes think I make impulse purchases of big-ticket items. Actually, I tend to make them after doing a lot of research, a lot of agonizing soul-searching over what is and isn't important to me, and finally a lot of steeling myself to get over the hurdle of actually ponying up the money.

And the thing is, that's usually not where the agony stops. As I knew I would, I kicked myself on the way back home. I had so many opportunities not to buy it and I managed to do it anyway. No matter how I spin it to myself, it's added debt. Paying it off quickly means existing debt isn't paid down. You can write the rest of the self-recrimination yourself here.

Yet if I hadn't bought it I'd be kicking myself with a similarly predictable line. I literally walked out the store, and back in, arguing with myself: you've been planning to buy a Mac desktop for the better part of a year; waiting until something "better is out" is always a losing proposition; if you're going to buy it, the time to do it is now when you can get a discount and--despite all your kvetching about work--have an income that looks like it may be more stable than you've been giving it credit for. (It seems like I'm being considered an important part of the reporting group for now, not a third wheel.)

Even so, right now the Mac is still sealed in the box. As long as I don't open it, I have ten days to keep up the internal argument.

Comments

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Great to hear that your status at work has improved!

If your bank account is sufficiently healthy, and your last computer was junky enough to bug you, hey, go with the impulse, I'd say.

[sethm.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. That internal argument sounds frighteningly familiar. Maybe there's a Buyer's Remorse Anonymous group we could join or something.

Although it sounds like you (and I) suffer more from "Buyer's or Not Buyer's Remorse".

[wolfkidd.livejournal.com]

It might not be much help, but the first thing through *my* mind is "Great purchase!". I've been in and out of the local Mac store several times over the past few weeks, looking at the G5, and it's one of the rare instances where I've looked at a computer and thought it was *sexy*, a machine with style *and* substance. All of the benefits of OS X, the Mac architecture and performance ... and damned if it isn't pretty! The G5 is the *only* time I've looked at the guts of an unmodified computer and had to admit it was aesthetically pleasing: clean, streamlined, well laid out. And externally well designed and modern looking too, unlike the pseudo-futurist bubblegum-pop look of the G4 series. With all the new furniture, you're well on your way to becoming one of those avante-garde California writer-types! Remeber us little people, when you're rich, hunh? :)