crossing_chasm2

(Image courtesy of Open Logo Project)

Have you ever rushed out to buy the next big thing, only to find out it was flawed? And then a better version came out soon after? Or the price dropped, or you obsessively tracked firmware updates, waiting for the one that would justify your decision to camp out at 4am at your local Best Buy? We’ve all been burned (witness the intense discussion about the nook!), and a few of us shared our stories below. What was your worst “early adopter” tale? Or have you been lucky in your tech buying? Read our sad tales of woe/happy memories of our cool gear, and then share your own!

Carly

I was one of the people who sat on line for an original iPhone. While I wasn’t exceptionally bitter at the price drop, I certainly didn’t complain when apple gave out $100 credits. I did get horribly burned rushing out and buying a Samsung Epix on the first day of sales; had I waited a few weeks I might have gone for a different phone, or at least been in my return window the first time the dreaded “slog dump” message hit.

Have I learned from my mistakes? Nope. I just bought a new Droid…

Amy

I had the first Blackberry. The one with the REALLY big screen. It was all black with an orange button. It had the side scroll wheel for navigation. I was in awe over this. It was a mini computer, that just did email, but at the time I was a heavy email user and needed that mail in the go thing. I loved it. I used it like crazy. I lucked out that I never had any problems with it. I still have it in storage and I am sure if I fired it up, it would still work.

Joel

I got the Toshiba e740 which was the one of the first Pocket PC to include WiFi. I loved it, but it was prone to a lot of issues that were fixed by future updates to PocketPC OS so I moved on to a iPaq 5555. It was a bumpy road but it was one that was paved with memories. I also have the G1 and while there are much prettier and faster phones out, I don’t regret the switch from Verizon to T-Mobile. I was and am still a cool kid since the G1 is one of the few phones to run with the Cyanogen firmware.

Mike

Technology likes me. I’m the guy who can get stuff running and it always works for me; I have never gotten a DOA device; with beta games I seldom get crashes – even the ones that ‘everyone’ gets!

That said, having also been someone who has bought seemingly everything through the years I have gotten burned somewhere else – money. Anyone remember paying $600+ for the Compaq C120/140 – the first-gen Windows CE handhelds? I was lucky to get $10 for it a while later.

Another thing – I have often felt that I was wearing an “I AM Stupid!” shirt with some of my purchasing and selling decisions – like selling my older HP Omnibook 300 to get HP’s first WinCE device (they chunky & craptastic HP300LX). I also regret selling off my Newton MP2000 when the company doing Lotus Notes sync announced they were dropping support … only to have them release it as freeware a month later!

Doug

As a rule, I’m a late adopter. Hardware I do fine with, but somehow I always seem to find the corner cases in software. I overthink things (“Shouldn’t I do this first, just in case?” and the kaboom!), I do things too fast (e.g., trying to open things while WM is still booting), and I seem to have a bigger EMI footprint than a Cisco CRS-1 router (they’re 7 feet tall). Recently, y’all saw me try to jailbreak my iPhone (3 failures before success) and found the weird corner-case with large books in B&N’s eReader. It’s just the way I am. If I was a Cheyenne, my name would be “Crasher of Software”. Hell, I don’t even like to buy cars that are release 1.

Of the very few things I’ve bought version 1 of were the PalmPilot 1000 (I cracked the screen in less than a month) and the iPhone. The iPhone has given me less trouble in 2.5 years than the WM HTC Universal in a few months. (I think I reboot the iPhone less in a month than I used to reboot my Universal every day.)

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