Wednesday, July 8, 2009

As Technology Moves Forward, I'm Tempted to Keep Pace

Sorry for the lack of posts, folks. I've been busy transferring my Hawaii vacation videos from my DV palmcorder cassettes to .avi format so that I can burn it onto a DVD for my family. My family's been miffed since I've had the tapes since 2005 and haven't shared it with them.

In the past, I just copied the DV cassettes onto VHS tapes to share, but my sister recently told me that she intends to throw out her VCR. She said with DVR, she has no need for a VCR. Great. So now I have to burn the family video onto DVDs. What I didn't realize was how slow and tedious this process is. (It takes about 15 minutes to transfer 30 seconds of data!)

cat


I guess my palmcorder (that my parents purchased in 2003) is now "old technology" and new camcorders record images on a hard-drive or memory cards rather than casettes. The image transfers on the new camcorders are much quicker and efficient.

This reminded me of how I've been REALLY slow to keep pace with the march of technology. As you know, in the past week, I purchased my FIRST EVER digital camera. (I've been making do with my cell phone camera up until now.) I still don't own a iPod and I don't have DVR. I own a HDTV-ready LCD TV that I watch in analog.

In many ways, I'm glad I don't feel the need to have the newest and greatest gadgets. I rarely feel inconvenienced by the lack of new modern conveniences.

But when I started playing with my new digital camera, I marveled at how I was missing out on a lot of fun features I can play with. And now, with the excruciating process of transferring data from a DV cassette to DVD, I wish I had a modern camcorder. I guess this is what you call lifestyle inflation and I'm trying REALLY hard to resist it.

7 comments:

RTC said...

Thank you for sharing your experience with transfering your videos. I really didn't understand the advantage of the new technology (I'm like the cat in the picture). I get it now--it has a memory card.

Unknown said...

Shtinkykat, I'm totally analog too. I don't have an iPod, a flat-screen TV (had to get the converter box to keep basic channels), a Blackberry, an iPhone, or anything like that. I don't even know how to download
MP3s--BF and I still get our music fix on vinyl and CD. And I don't have a digital camera, either, although now I feel better about getting one in the future.

K-money said...

I have most of the fancy new technology because BF is a technophile, but it sometimes seems like the hassle is not worth it. We never watch the videos he made, and I feel guilty if I don't watch programs in HD or spend time on the Playstation because the stuff was so expensive. Left to my own devices I'd probably still be using the 13 inch TV I bought in college. I like books - they don't need programming or remote control, you won't spend hours puzzling over how to hook them up, and you don't have to worry about people breaking in to steal them.

MoneyFunk said...

Resist! You know it'll be outdated in 6 months is you buy it today! ;)

Miss M said...

I'm old fashioned in many ways, I don't need the latest gadget and gizmo. As long as the old stuff still works, why replace it. It's definitely better for your wallet, gadget geeks who always have to have the latest and greatest spend tons of money on technology that will soon be obsolete. But I can see your point about the camcorder, tapes are annoying compared to disks.

MoneyMateKate said...

I'm a techno-minimalist. I hate the whole process of learning how to operate a new gadget. I set it up when I get it and then never change it. Though I must admit, I'm getting bored with my iPod playlists...

Ms. MoneyChat said...

yes, i too wear a technical dunce hat! hey is that how you spell dunce? oh well, i'm not sure but i hope you get the gist.

question ... what about transferring music from tapes to cds? luckily my car is old enough to have both a tape and a cd player. however, i want the music off of the tapes and onto something a little more modern.