I'm waiting for the BluRay 1080i pivoting iMac

WHEN I relocated to Abu Dhabi for a couple of years in the early 1990s I soon discovered that most things not sold in supermarkets are traded by haggling.

It's a game of bluff with simple tactics. You cannot always tell whether the seller's 'final price' really is a good deal. In the end, you have to look at what you're buying and how much you're paying and ask yourself whether or not you are happy with the deal. If something looks like it's worth six Dirhams then it is—at least to you.

The same applies in western societies, of course, except the marketeers don't haggle, they use advertising. They are professionals and they have very many of us beat! They have us convinced that orange flavoured drinks are somehow better than fresh orange juice and that so-called 'strawberry milkshake' made from syrup gunge and milk is somehow better than milkshake we could make ourselves from strawberries, ice cream and milk. In some countries, however, the ice cream is as synthetic as the so-called chocolate so you wouldn't want to make your own milkshakes! Just to drive home the con, huge quantities of sugar keep people coming back for more of the synthetic stuff.

Many people, it seems to me, have little capacity to evaluate material value. They get side tracked by gimmicks and fluff. McDonald's is popular throughout North America and the rest of the world but it really makes no sense to buy its products, even if such products contain reasonable levels of nutrition. In Sweden McDonald's do sell nutritious food because the government legislates that it must do.

Consider the seafood restaurant chain Red Lobster (http://www.redlobster.com/): you can get a terrific meal centred around some combination of fresh fish, lobster, shrimp, crab, chicken for about $15 (main course, excluding booze, excluding starter, excluding dessert) while being waited on by pleasant staff and while sitting on a comfortable seat at a table in a pleasant environment. Compare that with what $15 will buy you at McDonald's! Don't like seafood? Then try Tony Roma's instead (http://www.tonyromas.com/). Unbelievable ribs for $15. In Britain people dining out on £15 typically get dubious fodder.

Too many people seem unable to make value judgments based upon tangible metrics.

The same is true for high technology. Consider iPods. People shell out hundreds of dollars for poor-quality portable music. First of all it's odd that people would choose to listen to such dreadful quality sound against a backdrop of traffic or in their working environment. Much better to listen in the quiet of your own home to something with half-decent speakers. Someone paying hundreds of dollars for an iPod might be better off putting that money towards a Hi-Fi system, even if they have to buy it on installments. Examining what you get for your money in terms of the benefits, iPods don't make the grade.

iPods require users to buy their music too. That's not unreasonable but when you consider the lack of control that the iPod shuffle provides, wouldn't it be much more cost-effective to buy a small radio and tune it to your favorite station? The fun and trendy aspects of these products are not entirely lost on me but it interesting how people can be convinced to part with good money for such goods.

Last week, Apple announced its upgraded iMacs. The improvements were largely cosmetic but if you are in the market for an iMac then you will be pleased that they got a little better. On Apple's forum people were griping that they had bought the older iMac just before the new models were announced and they felt ripped-off. Incredible. Either the older iMac was worth what they paid or it wasn't. Customers have to make that judgment. I bet that when buyers of older iMacs cranked up their machines for the first time they were delighted. How does the introduction of new iMacs change that? The older iMacs are still the same great machines that they were before last week. Those of us who are not given to throwing our cash away need to weigh the benefits of non-essential purchases against the impact their cost will have upon our disposable income.

If you haven't heard of 1080p HDTV yet then you will soon. There are several HDTV standards, the most popular being 540p, the 540-line progressive scan, and 1080i, the 1080 interlaced scan that delivers 540 alternate lines per frame switching between even and odd lines successively. 540p and 1080i require the same signal bandwidth, of course. 1080i sets have come down so much in price that manufacturers want to claw back profits by selling new 1080p systems that deliver a much better picture at twice the bandwidth. There's a catch though. No one will be able to get 1080p content! 1080p cameras are only just becoming available and they cost in excess of $100,000. What's more, not only does no broadcaster (cable, aerial or satellite) transmit 1080p but they don't have the bandwidth to do so even if they had the content.

BluRay disk systems might eventually support 1080p but even that is not certain. Companies that have started to record in 1080p format have their content stepped down to 1080i for delivery to viewers. Furthermore, standard broadcast television looks awful on 1080p sets because you can clearly see how poor the image is!

So, let's be absolutely clear: purchasers of 1080p HDTV systems will not be able to view 1080p content for many years to come. So, if you know someone outside of professional film production who owns a 1080p system, then you know a cretin.

Contrast the crazy 1080p situation with the video-capable iPod. We are talking about a 2.5-inch colour display with a resolution of 320 x 240 and a refresh rate of 30 frames per sec. Unbelievable. Why would anyone want to squint at such a thing? And then pay for programming, such as it is!

Talking of displays, I recently noticed that great monitors are hard to come by these days. Marketeers have got people convinced that LCDs are somehow better than CRTs. For many people, this is true but for those of us who are used to good quality CRTs, it's not. A good quality CRT produces a much better image than a good quality LCD. That's a fact.

Unfortunately, LCDs have become so popular that it's no longer economical for companies to manufacture good quality CRTs. Take a look a ViewSonic's current CRT offerings. It has dropped the 'Professional' grade monitors and most of the CRTs they do sell now don't quote refresh rates. Check out what used to be available on this old but active link, here.

I've been using a 21-inch ViewSonic P815, running at 1600x1200 @ 85Hz, daily for the past eight years. It's had to be repaired twice but I can honestly say that the image is as good today as it was when I bought it, for more than $1,000. A ViewSonic P225f supports 1600x1200 @ 99Hz, 1920x1440 @ 84Hz and 2048x1536 @ 79Hz and currently sells as a discontinued model at around $500 but you have to hunt around for them.

As for iMacs, we know that Apple is on the BluRay bandwagon so we can expect to see BluRay iMacs next year. What iMacs currently offers is good but not sufficiently so for me to justify buying one, given the computers that I already have. So, I'm waiting for the iMac that provides 1080i support with a writeable BluRay drive and a pivoting monitor - 1080i displays are poor for reading documents unless they can be rotated into portrait orientation. Yeah, I know it's got an LCD but it's for my wife and she hates big boxes and wires. I'm expecting this iMac to be launched in late 2006 but if I can put together a dual-processor, dual-core Opteron-based system with 1080i/BluRay support running on Linux before Apple produces an iMac to my satisfaction, then I will. I know what I want and I won't spend money on stuff that isn't up to snuff.

Some hi-tech products provide great benefits. Other hi-tech products are merely toys for people with more money than sense. Values need to be weighed.

I know that too many people in Britain work hard but cannot afford good housing. Here's my tip for them. Head to Calgary. Very affordable housing, great economy and the Rockies. Hot summers, great winter sports and phenomenal steaks. Canada is the largest supplier of oil to the U.S. and Alberta residents get paid a share of the oil profits. Canada actively promotes immigration and is a peaceful country with no enemies. Oh, and there are five Tony Romas in Calgary. µ