The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
If you've been watching the commercials, the most wonderful time of the year is once again fast approaching. No, I'm not talking about Christmas, or even your birthday. I'm talking about back-to-school time. The time when parents are once again freed of their kids during the day. This is also the time of year when electronics stores flood your mailbox with flyers and your children accuse you of hampering their learning if they do not get the newest of the new gadgets in the next few weeks. Next to Christmas, this season is the largest there is for electronics sales, so some genuinely good deals are to be had if you shop for things you actually need. An example is all of the stuff that you use up during the year. If you've got a CD or DVD burner, some very good deals can usually be found for stacks of 50 and 100 disks that you can use up over the year. Prices continue to fall on both of these, and stacks can usually be found cheap if you shop around. I never worry too much about buying brand name disks that are more expensive because they are often pretty disposable. I use them for quick data storage, burning off music or pictures that I want to take somewhere and often lose them within a few weeks. Cheap is usually good enough unless you plan on keeping them around for a long time. You can usually find deals on everything like this. Printer ink, memory cards for cameras, rechargeable batteries, etc. are all on sale right now in most places. When it comes to hardware such as computers, MP3 players and cameras, you can also find a lot of good deals this season, you just need to know what you are looking for before you buy. Laptops are a perfect example. Many kids want a laptop they can take to school and use in class. Two important things that many people don't consider are school policies and size. If you think that you want to buy a laptop for your child, make sure you check with the school first. More than one parent has been sorely disappointed about spending money on a machine only to find out that the school does not allow outside machines into the building because of safety and firewall issues. Check before you buy. Secondly, the biggest things that people buying a first laptop often fail to look at are machine size and weight. When you buy a home desktop computer, you may want a large screen. Many people see laptops and think a bigger screen is better there, too. That is, until they begin lugging it back and forth to school and between classrooms every day. By the end of September, that 17-inch screen machine that weighs nine pounds begins to look far less attractive than the five-pound, 14-inch screen you initially considered. I have spoken with many, many people who after only a few months leave their laptop at home and treat it like a desktop because they don't want to carry it around anymore. The other thing that you can get a good deal on this season is MP3 players. While Apple's iPods are usually what kids want (and you can actually get a free one online right now if you order a Mac computer as well), there are a lot of other interesting devices out there. Creative has put together some beautiful players and the iRiver models are also selling well. Again, there are many models out there available, so consider things like battery life and storage in your considerations. Deals can be had. Check your flyers, check your local retailers, and, most importantly, check with your kids about what they are going to use all of these gadgets for before you buy. ([email protected]) Tech Notes runs Mondays.
