the Best tech toys on A Budget
by seAn Antone hunt
never ending list of new technology, all vying for your attention. But, if you are like me, while you like new tech toys, you have a limited budget for technology. More importantly, the tech that you do use has to justify itself. So, how do you choose between the latest and the greatest to get the best bang for your buck? Here are some suggestions for using your money wisely. Below are suggestions for how to spend a budget of $2500
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and still get the most out of your technology. First, let’s talk about some ground rules. All of these scenarios
assume that you already have a good desktop computer. While laptops are trendy, as any IT person will tell you, you simply cannot get the speed and computing power out of a laptop that you would get from a similarly priced desktop computer. Tat’s not important if all you are going to do is surf the web. But, if you start using any of the neat toys available, such as voice recognition software, then this subtle difference becomes a huge problem. Plus, consider that laptops are bulky, expensive and insecure, especially when compared to Ultrabooks, pads and smartphones. Besides, if you are like me, you won’t want to give up your dual HD monitors for a single 15 inch screen all the time. Instead, as you will see below, the general theme for a practitioner on a budget, should be one of remote connection to a high level desktop located in your office, your home, or some other secure location. From there, your world of peripherals can be extended endlessly.
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id you hear, they came out with a new iPad?” It seems like I hear something like that every day. Tere is a new pad, new smart phone, new software and a
TECHNOLOGY ON A $2500 BUDGET Seagate 2 TB USB 3.0 external hard drive ($100) First, let’s start with the basics. You will want to take
advantage of the cloud for your computing needs and file storage. Te best way to do this is to start with a simple USB eternal hard drive. For about $100 you can purchase as much as 2 TB of storage space. At the time of writing of this article, Newegg. com was advertising a Seagate 2 TB USB 3.0 external hard drive for $99.99 with free shipping. You may be asking,"Why purchase a hard drive if you are going
to use cloud computing?" Te answer is simple. Services such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Sky Drive, all work a little better when they have a drive installed on your computer. Tat is, if you want to be able to open files directly from your computer without downloading them first and then later uploading them when you finish, you will need to have the Dropbox or Google Drive client software installed and running on your computer. In actuality, these programs simply synchronize your folders and files with the ones on their servers. So, that means that if you need 50 GB of space on Dropbox, you will need to have 50 GB of space on your computer. It is cheaper for you to obtain this hard drive space using an external drive rather than an internal hard drive loaded on your computer. (Also note that this solution also makes using a laptop as your primary and only computer impractical too, since you don’t want to carry around your external hard drive with you everywhere you go.) More importantly, at this price point, if your external hard drive dies, you can simply purchase another and download your files from Dropbox or Google Drive onto a new one.
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