All I Really Need
September 2014
“When ‘No’ is your default, the things that fight their way to ‘Yes’ have a deeper value and meaning. They not only have to earn their place, they have to maintain their worth to keep it. ‘Yes’ is important. ‘Yes’ means that something really matters to me. But, this is only the case — and I would argue only can be the case — when ‘Yes’ is not easy and ‘No’ is the default.”
Patrick Rhone - Random Notes & Recent Thoughts #3
My birthday is just around the corner, and it just so happened that I came upon a fantastic deal on a Dell Venue 8 Pro for only $199. For those who may not know, the Venue 8 Pro is an 8” tablet with a quad core Intel Atom processor, 32GB storage and 2GB RAM. It runs full Windows 8.1 and is usually priced around $250 to $299. It has received great reviews from technology pundits and real world consumers alike. As I was not sure what my wife was planning for me in terms of gifts for my birthday, I forwarded the link to this deal to her.
A little later that day, she asked me why I wanted that particular tablet, and to my surprise, I actually could not come up with a decent answer. You see, this device wasn't even on my radar before I saw the deal on it. I had simply seen the deal, and in a matter of about 5 minutes, did a little background research on the tablet, thought to myself, “Hey, that looks pretty cool — I want that” and forwarded the link to her.
My wife's question caused me to stop and really think about the things that I genuinely need, and that tablet was not one of those things. In all honesty, I don't even like tablets that much. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there is nothing that the tablet in question would allow me to do that my current notebook would not allow me to do. Yes, the tablet could be more portable, but in reality, it would rarely leave the house. My notebook runs the same operating system, has more RAM and a better processor, has a bigger screen, and it has a real keyboard. Sure, I could get some sort of case/keyboard combo for the tablet, but that would make the tablet more like a laptop than a tablet at that point. The fact of the matter is that as of late, I use my notebook to create content, and I mostly use my phone for the things that one normally associates with a tablet's use.