When was the last time you used something the wrong way on purpose? I’ve mentioned this before as a bad thing, but sometimes it can be very useful.

How many of you out there have an iPod? Did you know the larger ones, like the 120gb Classic, can be used as a removable disk? Portable hard drives can be had for upwards of $100 or more, but if you’ve already got an iPod Classic, do you need to spend this money?

And for those of us with smaller music players, how much time do we spend annoyed we can’t take our entire collections with us? What about getting a netbook, rather than spending another three hundred dollars on a bigger player? Netbooks can be useful for other things, but many of them now have larger drives which would let us take out podcasts and movies and all of our music with us, without sacrificing the space.

A screwdriver might do a poor impersonation of a saw, but sometimes the right screwdriver can make a pretty good hammer, too.

Forget bad buys for a moment and think back to all of the things you’ve purchased over the years. How many of these things have never, not even once, been used for things the original description expressly did not state?

Sony’s PlayStation 2 could play DVD movies, but it turns out if you did this often enough, your game system would break.

How many of us just didn’t care? I didn’t have a DVD player when I got my PS2, and because it did things that, while a bad idea, were possible at all, I didn’t spend the money on a DVD player because I didn’t think I needed one. Two PS2 systems later, you better believe I have a DVD player and movies never go into my game system.

Thankfully, Sony learned from its users experience.

When the PlayStation 3 came out, and Sony among others was touting the BluRay format, was there any way they would let their own format and their own new toy not work hand in hand effortlessly and pain free? No chance.

Early adopters have the hardest lives in the digital landscape.

Whenever a new device comes out, there are problems. Compare the original iPhone to the iPhone 3G, or the iPhone 3GS. Look at the PlayStation against the PS2 or PS3 – compare the Xbox to its successor, the 360. In every case, the new version does what the old version did better, and usually adds new functions – which don’t work as well as the next version will, if the features make it in.
Unfortunately this means that those of us who dive on the new and shiny as soon as it gets out of the gate end up having more poor experiences than people who wait for versions two and three. By and large, early adopters are tougher on their toys, which doesn’t help either.

There’ a disconnect between the early adopters and everyone else, but aside from ads and blogs, we are who our friends trust with giving them the scoop, and for all we know, they may be far more forgiving than we are. I’m sure you’ve run into this before.

Which side are you on? The hyper-critical gadget hounds? Or the rest of us just trying to keep up?

One of the biggest problems lots of people have with getting new stuff is that it’s impulse purchasing. I try to avoid that whenever possible.

Most of the people I know have at least one story every six months or so about how they went out and got something they really didn’t need, or didn’t suit their actual purpose. There are tonnes of toys out there that, at first glance, appear to be really cool and really useful at the same time. Unfortunately, as things become more and more multipurpose, it’s easier for us to get sucked into believing an omnitasking toy will make our lives easier by collecting everything we need to do into one thing.

But what if we carry more than one thing? For the last year I’ve been carrying a BlackBerry Bold and an iPod Touch. I got the Touch first, and had a dumbphone. I needed a tasks list, and a calendar, and the Touch does both of these things. At the time, it also had enough room for my music collection.
But then I got the BlackBerry. Which was even better, because the calendar and tasks functions are much more robust. However, it left me with a multifunction iPod that has limited space and non-universal internet access (no way to use my BlackBerry as an adhoc WiFi source, either), and a very useful smartphone that does everything I want it to except have a physically large screenwith  touch capability and the insanely large resource that is the app store.

So now I’m shopping for new hardware, and I’d like to share what this experience has taught me, because making myself actively involved in the shopping process has been a learning experience.

First, make lists of things you want and need.

I don’t mean shopping lists. Lists of items you want, wish lists, are of no use when shopping with a practical frame of mind. Make a list of the tasks you complete in a day. Then use that list to inform the list of features you need out of whatever it is you’re looking to buy.
Do you need a music player? How much music do you have? If you’ve already got 5 gigabytes, look for a player that’s 8gb or more. Never undersell your needs, your collection is less likely to shrink than it is to grow.
Looking for a camera? What do you do with your pictures? Print them? How big? Are you likely to be taking action shots, or stills? Do you need macro features? Telephoto? Is it worth spending the money on professional accessories?

I’ll get more into this later, but it sums up easily as: there’s no way to tell what toys you need without knowing first what you need them to do for you.

Next, do some research.

What are your options? Once you know what kinds of things you need to do, it’s easier to find the products that suit those needs. Those “I’m a PC” commercials where people go shopping with needs and a budget in mind have a point – if you know what you’re looking for, products really do jump off the shelf at you. But you need to know what’s on the market first, before you can even go into a store.

Once you know what you want…

Shop! DO all the things you usually do. Go to a shop, talk to the salespeople. Compare prices (so much simpler now that you’ve got a list of products that may meet your needs). So go out, figure out exactly what you want, and where you’re going to get it.

Then wait two weeks.

Dude. Wait, what? Hang off on a purchase, after all that work? Why in the name of mind-rending awesomeness would you want to do that?
Simple. Remember all that impulse shopping you used to do before you became an imformed shopper? Well, while all that work, all that research can make you certain that you get what you want out of what you buy, you still need to be sure that it’s worth buying. I don’t mean is the product good, I mean can you afford to spend the money on this? Will it eat into plans for other purchases?
Adding two weeks pre-purchase to any large  buy gives you that much more time to avoid buyer’s remorse. Most stores have limited time periods, and in some cases limited usage rights, before products can be refunded without a penalty. Giving yourself time to make sure that the purchase is worth it for you, your budget and your lifestyle is a great way to extend that time period by getting over the shock of the purchase before it happens. It means you can get the most out of what you just got right from the moment you walk out of the store, rather than spending the first two weeks of ownership thinking it’s awesome and shiny. You’re now settled not just on the buying of your new toy, but your ownership of it.

And actually owning what you buy is worth the time and effort you’ll spend buying it.