5 ms·

The article SHOULD be titled "Now is the worst time to get locked into a two year contract". Blatant crap IMO.

gcb 15y ago
yeah. that will always be "true" btw. at every point in time you could say "don't buy gadget X because any time now they will have gadget Z available". and you will be correct. works for cellphones, cars, kitchen knifes. anything.
- Dylan16807 15y ago
  Not really. Major changes don't come by all that often, only every year or three. It's a really bad idea to buy a pre-ICS phone while ICS is coming out, but once you jump that hurdle everything is going to be incremental and minor for several months.
- ceejayoz 15y ago
  My 10 year old kitchen knife compares favourably to a new one.
  - StavrosK 15y ago
    Well, it's more mature.
  - gcb 15y ago
    So does my 5yr asus netbook. but plenty of people would say otherwise for both.
    - ceejayoz 15y ago
      That's a pretty dumb comparison. With regular sharpening, a kitchen knife can be just as effective as a brand new one for decades. It'll cut food just as quickly and efficiently. A laptop may be workable, but it's going to become underpowered in empirical ways fairly quickly.
      - gcb 15y ago
        as is missing the point of an exaggeration. but again, my 5yr laptop still does everything i need at the same speed as it did 5yrs ago. in fact, using the 3.1 kernel i think it's even faster than 5yrs ago. on the other hand, 2yr of sharpening my san mai honyaki blade made the balancing impossible to cut the sashimi slices i used to cut when it was new. They came out too irregular now. Also, if i had waited only 3 months before buying that knife, i would be able to buy the newer model with the nicer black handle instead of brow, which was only available to the Maguro bōchō at the time. I still regret it to this day.
- onemoreact 15y ago
  That's not really true. I bought a i7 2600k over a year ago and no better CPU has come out and it's price is virtually unchanged. So while waiting less than 3 months for the next Intel CPU is probably worth it, last year I knew I would have to wait a year or more for something better so there was little point in waiting. PS: I bought a GTX 680 today I don't expect to see a 200W GPU that's much better for at least a year and a due to the die shrink a significant upgrade is probably 2 years away.
kemper 15y ago
Whether or not you or I agree, you've completely missed the point the author makes. "For tech savvy smartphone users, committing to a two-year contract is brutal. Mobile technology moves so fast that smartphones can seem outdated just months after they launch. While this trend is bound to continue, the degree to which new generations of Android phones outdo their predecessors will always ebb and flow. Handsets have been improving at a somewhat modest pace for the past year or so, but the next crop of smartphones to hit store shelves will represent a huge leap forward rather than a few short steps." His position is that while next-gen will always surpass current-gen, the upcoming handsets he covers will be a more substantial leap than generations past, and subsequent devices over the next 6-9 months will be playing catch-up rather than continuing to leapfrog.

gcb 15y ago

yeah. that will always be "true" btw. at every point in time you could say "don't buy gadget X because any time now they will have gadget Z available". and you will be correct. works for cellphones, cars, kitchen knifes. anything.

Dylan16807 15y ago
Not really. Major changes don't come by all that often, only every year or three. It's a really bad idea to buy a pre-ICS phone while ICS is coming out, but once you jump that hurdle everything is going to be incremental and minor for several months.
ceejayoz 15y ago
My 10 year old kitchen knife compares favourably to a new one.
- StavrosK 15y ago
  Well, it's more mature.
- gcb 15y ago
  So does my 5yr asus netbook. but plenty of people would say otherwise for both.
  - ceejayoz 15y ago
    That's a pretty dumb comparison. With regular sharpening, a kitchen knife can be just as effective as a brand new one for decades. It'll cut food just as quickly and efficiently. A laptop may be workable, but it's going to become underpowered in empirical ways fairly quickly.
    - gcb 15y ago
      as is missing the point of an exaggeration. but again, my 5yr laptop still does everything i need at the same speed as it did 5yrs ago. in fact, using the 3.1 kernel i think it's even faster than 5yrs ago. on the other hand, 2yr of sharpening my san mai honyaki blade made the balancing impossible to cut the sashimi slices i used to cut when it was new. They came out too irregular now. Also, if i had waited only 3 months before buying that knife, i would be able to buy the newer model with the nicer black handle instead of brow, which was only available to the Maguro bōchō at the time. I still regret it to this day.
onemoreact 15y ago
That's not really true. I bought a i7 2600k over a year ago and no better CPU has come out and it's price is virtually unchanged. So while waiting less than 3 months for the next Intel CPU is probably worth it, last year I knew I would have to wait a year or more for something better so there was little point in waiting. PS: I bought a GTX 680 today I don't expect to see a 200W GPU that's much better for at least a year and a due to the die shrink a significant upgrade is probably 2 years away.

kemper 15y ago

Whether or not you or I agree, you've completely missed the point the author makes. "For tech savvy smartphone users, committing to a two-year contract is brutal. Mobile technology moves so fast that smartphones can seem outdated just months after they launch. While this trend is bound to continue, the degree to which new generations of Android phones outdo their predecessors will always ebb and flow. Handsets have been improving at a somewhat modest pace for the past year or so, but the next crop of smartphones to hit store shelves will represent a huge leap forward rather than a few short steps." His position is that while next-gen will always surpass current-gen, the upcoming handsets he covers will be a more substantial leap than generations past, and subsequent devices over the next 6-9 months will be playing catch-up rather than continuing to leapfrog.