TKOG Whose idea of frugality includes iPhones (of course)

Thank you for your birthday wishes, kittens! Had a glorious day, and looking forward to making 24 the best year of my life — though this one will be hard to beat. For reflections on a less great year (please never let me be 16 again), hop over to Life As A Human to read about the coming of age of those high-school Mean Girls.

NTKOG #237 : The kind of fiscally responsible tech-junkie who, dissatisfied with the current market offerings, frankensteins her own.

I am: trying not to be an evil consumer but, dude, my life requires consumption!

I am not: one for making my own stuff or for splashing out for custom specs. Pret-a-poor-ass-20something, right?

The Scene: The Best Buy at Fenway where, if you go, I’m straight-up telling you to request Mark, who is a god. As I’ve mentioned on here, four days a week I go straight from work to the BPL to write these musings that y’all so kindly tolerate. Unfortunately, this system requires me to tote my 13″ MacBook everywhere in a cramped little messenger bag.

After eight months of the fifteen-pound bag imbalance, my right shoulder has started developing some Quasimodo action. And, I mean, I know I’m not dating right now, but let’s not get ridiculous, right?

As an incredibly generous birthday present, my amazing parents told me to go pick out a lightweight netbook to stave off a grim financial future of semi-weekly chiropractic treatments. While I researched, though, it occurred to me that nothing on the market met my current specifications.

To wit, I needed: something incredibly light; so tiny I can unfold and use it on the bus, yet with a full-size keyboard; perfectly reliable internet access; great battery life.

I neither needed nor wanted: tons of memory (I do everything online with DropBox); a big screen (I type with my eyes closed half the time); lots of RAM (wtf is that? I mean, honestly?); pretty casing and/or accessories; access to ANY FRIGGIN’ WEBSITES other than my blog, ’cause, dude, Facebook is how novels don’t get written.

As I flicked through the options at Best Buy, checked every one out on my trusty iPhone. This one’s $200 more than I want to spend for all the features I hate; the price is right on that one, but reviews malign its internet capability. One by one, I scanned review pages on my iPhone and realized that nowhere in the world existed the perfect mach–

Wait a minute. Wait one gosh darn minute.

“Dude,” I joked to Mark, “what I really want to do is plug a keyboard into my iPhone.”

I expected him to brush it off, but his whole face lit up. “Give me ten minutes to check that!” he shouted over his shoulder, as he flagged down the in-store Apple expert while running simultaneous Google searches on no fewer than three display computers.

After a quarter of an hour of rejecting potential solutions for my un-jailbroken phone, he ran to the Apple accessory shelf and grabbed an iPad keyboard dock.

“This shouldn’t work. Like, it’s not supposed to, but — I wonder.” Before I could even object, he sliced through the shrinkwrap and led me to the customer service counter. Where, I am delighted to report, it worked like a charm.

Thank goodness I had another iPhone to take the picture of this one with. #parodyofmyself Also, for size comparison, the keyboard condom is stolen off of my 13" MacBook. Full-size keyboard, baby.

As he rang me up, explaining the store’s return policy, he thanked me for giving him the opportunity to learn about his product. Uh, that’s what I call customer service.

The Verdict: Guess who just became the owner of a custom $80-dollar Apple netbook that works exactly to her specifications? I’m extremely proud of this, if only because it’s an elegant and slightly witty $80 solution to a $400 problem.

Of course my idea of personal finance slash frugality involves an iPhone. Of course it does.

That said, even though Mark was more the protagonist of this story, I like including it in the NTKOG repertoire because it’s chock full of things I wouldn’t have attempted a year ago today: asking an employee to take time out of their day to help me, standing up for my clear ideas of what I need in a consumer situation, generally seeking input to do something just a little unorthodox. Heck, a year ago I wouldn’t even have been doing enough writing to justify buying a netbook.

So, heads up for those of you whose netbook needs are similar to mine: I’ll bet you can score a 3G iPhone for dead cheap on Craigslist now. Even without data service, just hook that puppy up to WiFi and a keyboard and, bam, instant writers’ oasis.

Tagged as: apple hacks, best buy, boston, fenway, five blog posts used to be a GOOD day for me. now it's average., ingenuity, it took me twenty minutes to get through to his manager so i could compliment him after. hey best buy -- if you keep hiring badass dudes you should come up with a better compliment method in your cust, my roomba's getting jealous that i talk about my iphone on here so much, said messenger bag has a screenprint of a penny-farthing bicycle on it because i'm basically a badass, technology, the One True Phone, who doesn't need a phone/ipod/netbook/e-reader all in one pocket-sized package?!