The Peregrin Falcon

I have wrestled with this issue more and more these days. I would like a laptop for the portability. However, as an IT professional, I am usually at my office PC 8-12 hours a day, so I don’t know if I would use the laptop simply out of overexposure. I have a family, and I don’t want family time to be spent IM-ing or web browsing or (heaven forbid) working even more.

In fact, I spent a lot of time/money making a decent desktop a few years back; so much so that it is just now getting to be lesser than the current market norm; and yet I spend less than five hours a month on it and it is literally within arms reach of my bed.

I guess if I needed a laptop, I would already know. I just don’t want it to be another thing that I got along without before, but now it is a part of me; like the cell phone.

I used to say “I’ll never get a cell phone”, yet one day a sales job came up that needed “constant contact” and even after I left the job the home phone was simply not enough.

When did being a good geek mean spending every last dime on technology that simply made us use more technology?

Maybe it’s just me, or maybe I’m just not as good of a geek as I used to be?

According to TV, geeks are no longer the awkward, unattractive, impish, social pariahs they once were. Now, thanks largely in part to the Dot Com boom (later followed by a bust!), geeks are perceived as wealthy urban hipsters (aka yuppies). Geeks are the ones who go to coffee bars in trendy jeans and labeled shirts with cool retro logos.

The Big Bang Theory would have you believe anyone of above average intelligence is a successful physicist who lives in a spacious upscale San Francisco loft; which costs more than most people pay for a mortgage on a house three to four times as big and has supermodels living next door that would go out with them, if only they could summon the courage to ask them out.

In fact, in recent pop culture, the geeks are the good-looking ones who have glasses and less than sleek clothes that once taken off transform them as Superman from Clark Kent; instantly the stigma of geekdome is gone and all but forgotten e.g. The Princess Diaries, “Ugly” Betty, 10 Things I Hate About You, The New Kid, etc.

The reality is that geeks are by nature the obsessive, compulsive, seekers of whatever their fancy happens to be. There are multitudes of flavors of geek.

However, I have yet to see the majority of them be the Dot Com millionaires so publicized. In fact, most of us have been through some tough unemployment in the last few years; and some are just barely riding the fence to get to retirement.

So the wannabes will continue to buy iPhones, and iPods, and laptops, and setup personal wi-fi hotspots in homes and cars while the tried and true real “geek” will still be that guy with bad hair, awkward body type, and the pale skin, or paler skin; due to lack of sunlight, since geeks are usually in the basement. Real geeks will be the ones who write blogs about being a geek. Real geeks will revel in Star Trek, or Star Wars, or Warhammer, or Cosplay, or ComicCon to the point of actually being in costume, or wearing the t-shirt from every tech convention they have ever attended. All the money may go to hobbies, while they still have Commodore 64s with working drives or HP Pavilion’s working as print servers. Because the geek can work all the programs they need including Fortran, Delphi, Cobol (which many municipalities still use!), Visual Notepad, or Macromedia from a basic 1 Gb ram ugly-off-white tower with an over clocked Pentium and a new graphics card.

Do I need a laptop? Probably not. Do I want one? Yes, please.

After all deep down inside, the real geek is the one who resents the beautifying of geekdome because they themselves secretly want it to be that way. Which, by the way, includes me too.

This morning I was bouncing around the blogsphere. Apparently a story has broken that Apple and Walmart are going to team up to sell a $99 version of the iPhone with 4 Gb. wired.com

Mashable.com’s Adam Ostrow posts some Twitters about users complaining that Wal-Mart will water down Apple. Wired also hinted that the brand name would not be as strong if the new phones were sold in a mass market like Wal-Mart.

As a mid-western born working dad, I have to say this is insulting to me. For many, the Apple image has long been one of techie snobbery; college liberal; brainwashed; ” we are too cool for you and we know it”. The Simpsons (Ostrow) back this up in spades. Not to mention the PC v. Mac commercials that constantly downgrades anyone foolish enough to own the technologies that 95% of the world runs on. No matter how cleverly guised the commercial is yet another cut in a increasing cacophony of insults towards the every-day folks.

For many a mid-western town, the Wal-Mart isn’t just the center of commerce, it is the only choice outside of a hour drive “to town.” Urban dwellers that have lived, grown up, and worked solely in the nation’s most populated areas have no clue about the lack of choices for a growing population of America.

As a technology degree holder, I am no slouch for equipment. In fact, I have written in previous posts my disdain for the new Microsoft Vista program. I have even considered switching to the dark-side and becoming a Mac user. However, I am not hip, I am not young, I am not overly successful, I am not wealthy or a trust-fund baby; so the Mac image lovers wouldn’t like me in the club.

I know it may be hard to swallow, but someone who drinks Starbucks and writes on his Macbook with black turtleneck and clear specs might have something in common with the local yokel in overalls and a trucker’s cap.

In my humble opinion, the move to Wal-Mart is savvy. It shows the kind of thinking that Microsoft has done for decades. Market to the largest amount of people with the least means and you will be the most widely used product.

$400 is excessively much for a cell phone with all-in-one fancy gadgets and tricks for the common Wal-Mart customer who won’t spend that much on the entire Christmas. However, $99 is well with-in reach, and might even convert some previously die-hard PC users.

So, before you get your turtlenecks and spectacles in a bunch, realize the truth; you are simply not as cool as you had once hoped and companies exist to make money.