Early Adopters

I first heard the term in some class. Can't remember which, probably Economics. Economics is an antithesis to the mind of an accountant, so I got very little out of the class. Supply and Demand? Yeah, I got that one. But all those other concepts "all things remaining the same except", not so much, mainly because all other things do not remain constant, so it always blew the economic theory in my 2+2=4 ideal world.

Anyway, I did remember the term "early adopters". Those geeky people who have to buy the very first technowhatchamacallit on the first day available. I remember my brother's first Betamax. The thing was the size of a minibarn. I'm pretty sure the price tag was around $800 or so. It was around the time when Reagan was shot because he played the shooting frame by frame over and over again.

A few months ago a big Panasonic truck set up shop where I work.  It was a traveling 3D show.  I went in the trailer not expecting much.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, 3D.  Saw that on my tv set back in the 60's watching Creature From the Black Lagoon. 

So Panasonic is on the road floating out the trial balloon of 3D TV's.  Prepare to be awed.  The glasses read infrared messages from the screen that direct your eyes to the full effect of the 3D.

The 15 minute video is awesome.  Part of it was filmed at the Olympic Opening Ceremonies in China.  The view was shot from the a standing position on the floor when the 2000 drummers were operating in complete unison.  You actually felt like you were standing right next to them.  It really is amazing.

When PC's were making their first appearances, our department purchased one.  Back in the day when they had no hard drives.  You put in a floppy disk with the DOS operating system, took that out, put in the software, took that out and used an empty floppy to save your work.

This was a floppy floppy, not the hard "floppies" that came later.

The first day the CPA I worked for put the disk in and hit a couple buttons and before he knew it he had initialized the operating system on the disk.  POOF.  Gone.  That was my first lesson on what not to do on a pc.

Several years later, my department purchased a "portable" Compaq.  It came with some weird thing called Windows.  I opened Win.exe when we first got it and could not figure out what anyone would use it for.  Made no sense to me and was such a memory hog that you couldn't even open it when we had loaded a few files on the hard drive.  I distinctly remember thinking it was good they gave the Windows away free on the pc, because no one would ever end up buying it.  Yes, I know, I'm not much a visionary. 

Never been an early adopter,  we were late in buying a desktop pc at home.  I finally got a laptop and a wireless connection only two years ago.  We just replaced our rear projection TV with a 55 inch Samsung LED that daily makes me feel more beautiful.  Really.  They should advertise this benefit to get more women buyers.  The reason?   You can see every wrinkle, pimple, pucker, freckle, tiniest scar on every glamorous beauty that you thought was perfect.  I'm just glad I don't see my actual face on it, I might not feel so beautiful then.

So now out comes this new whatchacallit horribly named the I-Pad.  I don't get it.  But then I didn't get Windows either at first. 

Seriously.  Is this necessary?  It just looks to me like something one of those early adopters will buy and destroy within a month by dropping it.  How are you supposed to hang on to it? 

I can just imagine Dooney & Bourke is rushing around creating an over priced I-Pad skin to get on the market next week.