Into The Weeds

Take the following with a grain of salt. I’m just kind of bored and figured it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. Here are some experiences of mine (in chronological order) that might be construed as product and/or brand endorsements:

• HP Color LaserJet 2550n – September 2005: Paying $500 for a color laser printer turned out to be a financially and technically sound decision after all. In the 4 years that this printer has been around, the toner cartridges have been replaced once, and the printer is still in 100% working order. Contrast that to any of the ink-jet printers out there that break after a year, and need $50 ink cartridge replacements regularly (even when they’re not being used and just dry out). These days, however, it looks like consumer-grade color laser printing is starting to go down the ink-jet road with small-quantity metered toner cartridges and shoddily built hardware.
• Dell 2405FPW – August 2005: Sure, these days 24″ LCDs are pretty standard, but back then it was a pretty big leap. It still holds up beautifully 4 years later and has put several CRT screens to rest.
• TiVo Series 2 DVR – December 2004: Just see this entry from 2006 for some of the reasons why TiVo is a life-changing experience. And no, I still don’t mean the crappy standard HD DVR that the cable/satellite companies foist upon us. These days, however, Comcast (in Boston at least) offers a DVR with the actual TiVo software installed. I find it quite serviceable, and a definite improvement over the craptastic regular DVR, but it’s still not the whole experience. The ‘ol Series 2 is still going strong, and I’m considering upgrading to a TiVo HD cablecard unit at some point.
• Power Mac G4 – October 2003: It’s hard to believe that it was 6 years ago that I made the switch (see this blog entry from ’06 for some pontification on the subject). That G4 tower has been such a horse that it’s still sitting here under my desk in use as a secondary system for bittorrent clients, file serving, and DVD/CD burning. Unfortunately, with Snow Leopard’s removal of support for the PPC architecture, the end of the road may be coming soon.
• Ikea “Poang” Chair – August 2002: Who knew that a $70 wood and fabric chair could be so comfortable, durable and not too bad looking either?
• Sony 24″ wega TV – December 2000: Almost 9 years later and it’s just as good as the day it arrived as a christmas present. I know, not a “purchase,” but it deserves to be on here anyway. It’s not HD, but has a great picture and I can easily see it lasting another 9 years.