peterbas wrote: ↑Sun Nov 03, 2024 2:48 pm
I want a 250 dollar smartphone with a 17-inch touchscreen and with a battery lasting for minimum 12 hours for 100 dollars!
And I want a handmade 6/4 5 valve Bb tuba for 2000 dollars
Your sarcasm/dismissive tone ("you're a naive fool to expect fill-in-the-blank") falls on deaf ears, as super-high resolution televisions with gigantic screens now cost less (in ACTUAL numbers of - worthless - USD) than tube color televisions (which required constant readjustment - as attempts to tune them in and adjust the colors away from predominantly green or red hues) cost fifty, forty, and thirty years ago.
My tech-store reconditioned (new-looking/new-working) laptop with - when I bought it - the latest Windows OS cost me roughly 100 dollars. (Also, its SCREEN is actually
FIFTEEN AND A HALF INCHES diagonal, though it doesn't detach from the keyboard -
which is a feature that I've ALWAYS thought should be standard with laptops.) The battery allows me (though I'm not any sort of movie-downloader/watcher) to watch at least a couple of full-length movies (haven't ever attempted three, nor for or five...and - again - I'm not a movie-watcher. Downloading and watching movies - ie. seldom - has been Mrs. bloke's idea.
Those who seem to hold rigid top-down dictated views about so many things - and feel they must align themselves with the latest/greatest groupthink - always tend to be those who laugh off the idea that things - for which they paid full retail - might actually others (who bother to watch and wait) very little...occasionally next-to-nothing. (Yeah...I'm reminded of a high school acquaintance who thought the same way...the latest/greatest car/computer/whatever...Were it not for his wife - though he was both his high school and university's valedictorian - he'd be broke, today.) As just one example, I waited just about a decade (having had my eye on it for that long) to purchase the make/model of (very large size) tuba which I now own. (I strongly suspect that Mr. Wade did the very same thing.) My father (a wise man who lived quite comfortably, provided well for his widow, and with a good bit left over for his offspring...' left my Mom with c. the today-equivalent of "a few mil") taught me these things. ie. "Let those who buy into the latest things buy them first, test them out, put up with their design oversights and shortcomings (technological or otherwise), wait to see whether they actually become viable, and then wait for them to become (if they ever do) remarkably practical, extremely commonly available, and "casual-money" inexpensive. Otherwise, what we have now (ex: 10"x14" printing-press printed sheet music and good lighting) works just fine. (Last night's concert - American In Paris - very nicely-engraved rental 10"x14") had one quick page turn (3 fast bars of 2/4 time)...I never missed the turn, even though I have old craftsman-roughened dry/calloused fingers.
Guess what I never owned "back then"?
- no "nehru" shirts, no "stack" shoes, no "CPO" jackets. Also (decades before most others - referring to them as "foreign cars" - noticed them) I was shopping for small Toyotas (as - a decade before I noticed them - they already had made their mark as very reliable cars on other continents...and I was paying attention).
Regarding
☑︎ handmade
☑︎ 5 valve
☑︎ $2000 USD
☑︎ 6/4
☑︎ Bb tuba,
I'll buy it (as I've bought other such tubas), flip it, and keep my eyes open for the next one.