ELECTRONICS SHOPPING SPREE!

I have to admit, one of my big weaknesses when it comes to spending money, is my fascination with electronic gadgets.  I love computers, the new android pads and now ipods.  Yes, that's ipods, plural.  I resisted buying an ipod for years, thinking I'd never really get any use out of it, after all, my Palm Pilot has about 2 years worth of dust on it now, but boy was I wrong.  I finally bought a 6th generation 120 gb Ipod classic and have enjoyed it tremendously.  It's probably the best $50 I've spent on entertainment for as long as I can remember.  I was so pleased with it and the amount of use I've gotten out of it, I decided to buy a used 2nd generation 32 gb Ipod touch.  Picked one up for a bargain price of $169 and can't wait to try it out.  It arrives tomorrow, so I'll happily be busy figuring out how it works when I pick it up at the post office after work.

Also decided to buy a newer computer.  I've wanted to switch from my Dell Optiplex to a Hewlett Packard desktop for a while now, but have been putting it off to save some money.  Recently came across a great deal online.  While it's still a Windows XP Pro desktop, it's equipped with a 3gb dual core processor and 2 gb ram, so it should run circles around my old Optiplex.  The hard drive is only 80 gb, which is small by todays' standards, but more than adequate for my purposes.  At any rate, I plan to pick up one of the newer external terabyte drives sometime soon, so onboard storage won't be such an issue.  Also got a 23 inch HP wide screen flat panel monitor for $119 to go with my new tower.  I've had no problems with Windows XP Pro and my laptop has Windows Vista, which has also worked well for me, so I'm not in any real hurry to upgrade to Windows 7. 

So, even though I finally gave in and spent some money on electronics I think I've come out quite well price wise.  For a grand total of $576 I bought an HP desktop computer with 23 inch flat panel monitor, an Android tablet, an Ipod classic, an Ipod touch and accessories for both Ipods.  That's a lot of equipment for less than $600.  To make it an even better deal, I sold my Optiplex tower for $120 and still have my 19 inch flat panel monitor, which I'm sure I can sell for an additional $50.  By the time all is said and done, I'll have gotten all the updated equipment for $406.  Not bad for a couple days online shopping.