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Wednesday, January 1, 2014

[Rant] My new year gadget buying resolutions

It's new year folks!!! The year 2014. Year 2013 came and went really fast. But a lot of things happened during that year. Affairs in the personal life are outside of the scope of this blog. This is all about tech.

I bought a lot of gadgets as well.
 
Man, that's a lot of money. Sure, some of them were bought by selling the old gadgets. So it's not a huge expenditure. Still, I think I could have saved quite a sum if I made the right choices at certain times. For example, I should have waited on the Tablet. I should have kept the 2600K CPU. The headphones – the Roccat Kaves were too much. Should not have bought the Leap Motion controller as well.
 
So what's it going to be this year? I already have a list.
  • New camera: Canon 70D + 18-135mm IS STM lens kit
  • New video card: AMD Radeon R9 290 (custom cooled) or GTX 780 or GTX 870/880 (Maxwell)
  • New mouse: Logitech G602 wireless gaming mouse
  • New keyboard: Logitech G710+ mechanical gaming keyboard
 
I’m still not sure if I should get the Canon 70D. The camera itself is amazing, but if I cannot put it into proper use, it would be a lot of money spent badly. The darn thing costs $1260 as of today. I don’t think the prices would go down any time soon. Usually the prices hold their ground until a new model comes out. But considering the fact that Canon doesn’t put out new semi-pro or pro cameras every year, I guess the price will hold. So waiting any longer is not the wise thing to do if I am solid on the purchase. I’m still trying to learn the S95 camera and I have learned a lot of things in the last few days.
 
The video card is a must, but the issue is, none of the existing cards available don’t give me enough bang for the buck. The custom R9 290 cards aren’t available yet. No idea about the performance improvements coming from Mantle API as Battlefield 4’s Mantle support has been pushed to next month. Argh! And the GTX 780 prices are too high. Maxwell is only about 2-3 months out but I doubt it will be affordable. Maybe I should play the waiting game. But the things about PCs is that there is always something better coming around the corner. That waiting game is never going to see an end.
 
That last two are not important. I might only consider them if the existing keyboard and mouse break. But who knows? You can never understand impulse purchases but they happen all the time.
 
So when am I going to buy these stuff. There are three important points.
  • I am going to renew the internet connection through Kakaku.com and that means I might get a nice cash discount on something. As of right now, the discount is applicable to both the 70D DSLR and the R9 290 graphics card. The discount weighs at JPY40,000 which is a huge sum.
  • Then I have more than JPY6,000 worth points at Sofmap. They sell the 70D as well as the R9 290, but the DLSR is heavily overpriced at their store. So I might have to get the graphics card. Or I can get the mouse or the keyboard as well.
  • My birthday is coming up this month, which means I can get something to gift myself. The graphics card is kind of too much, so I might have to go with the mouse. I’m not sure if the keyboard will ever be a viable purchase as I would lose a bit of the G15’s functionality with the G710+. Why cannot they make a mechanical keyboard with an LCD? You might think the LCD is an overhyped piece of feature, but I use it for hardware monitoring all the time.

So I guess, 70D with the discount from the new internet connection, R9 290 with the points at Sofmap.com and G602 with hard cash as the birthday gift. That should do I guess.

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