That shiny new toy buzz

In the midst of the Chinese New Year lull, when the streets were quiet and all the people had returned to their hometowns, some thieves took advantage of the quiet to steal from my friends office.

One of our Korean friends who runs a computer sales and repair business for other Koreans living in Kunming was still working during the week. He stepped out of his office for his lunch break and locked the office by putting a bike lock through the handles of the double glass doors, but not putting the grilled shutter down. He was only gone for about 30 minutes but that was enough time for some people to come, break one of the door handles off and make off with his electric motorbike, his laptop and 10 years worth of backup data stored on 3 external hard drives.

My friend spent quite a bit of time feeling pretty depressed at the loss of this stuff. It’s actually the 3rd or 4th time now that he has lost an electric motorbike to theives. He spent the last week looking at different options for buying a new notebook computer. After seeming me use my 15″ macbook pro since I arrived in China and quizzing me on the benefits of using a mac, he ultimately decided to give apple a try.

Yesterday I went with him to the local electronics shopping district where he purchased a new 13 inch macbook pro.

Walking out from the store he had the biggest smile on his face that I’ve seen in a long time. He couldn’t stop talking about how happy he was and said that buying the new computer had completely erased the feelings he had from the theft.

I can understand how he feels and I’m sure many other people can as well. There’s a special satisfaction and buzz that you get when buying a new ‘toy’. Wether it’s a new digital camera, phone, notebook or any other type of gadget or gizmo.

My dad also bought a new notebook computer this week as the notebook that I purchased during my second year at ABS (6 years ago now) finally packed it in. There’s a good chance that he’s feeling the buzz now as well.

However, a new toy can also invoke new gadget envy in others who see your new toy and want one of their own. I’m immune from the envy this time as I already have a shiny and reasonably new notebook that’s bigger and more powerful than his. But I’ve certainly felt it in the past when someone has purchased a gadget that I want!

After a day of using his new comptuer my friend is slowly starting to learn about a new OS and is still having fun. I spent about 4 hours this afternoon helping him get things set up and teaching him how to avoid some of the newbie mistakes. Having been partly responsible for his purchase, I feel some sense of duty to teach him how to use it properly.

Although I don’t feel the new gadget envy for my friends notebook, I’ve already got my eye on the next big-boys-toy that I want to buy