My blog has been moved to ariya.ofilabs.com.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Euros vs Features

Recently I wanted a mini music centre. I tried to search for what I need, but still could not find the best compromise between the features and the amount of money I have to spend.

Finally there was a special offer from a discount market. I carefully checked the flyer to see whether it fulfills my requirement. For example, sleep mode and remote control are necessary because I just like listening to radio just when I am about to fall asleep. Auxiliary input is also a must since I want to connect it to the DVD player. Seems everything is fine, so I showed up in the store minutes after it was opened and bought it.

Because the price is half of typical music centre found in electronic shops, I was ready to be surprised if there are some catches. Fortunately, it is all just as good as I imagine. Sub woofer is included, which I did not really need but why not. There are even USB port and MMC slot, nice to plug-in the portable player or card containing music files.

Few design decisions seem strange to me. The power supply is inside the sub woofer box, probably to reduce the space in the main unit. That means I can't use the system without sub woofer at all, but that's not so bad. Speakers are small, yet the output is loud enough anyway for my small apartment. I can't judge the quality because my ears have close to zero sensitivity to tones. As for the FM receiver, I doubt that it tunes to all stations but there are few good strong stations so I could not care more. For playing CD, I must placed it from the top which is not so interesting because I put everything in the shelf. A normal CD tray would have been better. Since I have limited music collection, that's not a big deal at all.

I could say that I'm really happy with it. I would have spent twice the amount of money if I want the common mini music centre, which has more features that what I really need anyway. So why waste more euros.

I wish we had such choice also for mobile phone. Unfortunately, I still can not find a phone which fully fits my requirements: no camera at all, maximum battery duration, sturdy case, easy-to-use menu, and good reception. I'm old fashioned, I'd like to use it only to make phone calls, so if possible I'd like to avoid extra euros, time, distraction, headache because the phone has music player, camera, wireless connectivity, browser, and other extra baggage.

But I can see here that I'm dreaming. Or maybe I'm just the most selfish (potential) customer.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have a Nokia 1120. Old technology, but the battery lasts a week of heavy use, mono screen! no poliphonic ringtones! No camera? No browser? This has no email!

Best of all, it costs so little, I can lose it and just buy another one tomorrow.

The bad side is, it has no PC connectivity, so I can't backup my addressbook, but that's not terrible (I borrow a better phone for 15 minutes every month or so).