the kim family Hanukkah economic stimulus plan

Hannukkah for the Kim family will most likely be somewhat moved up to coincide with Black Friday - as our family has some pent up demand.  

Thought I'd blog on this given that the demand is tech and the recipients are 2019's and 2021's respectively (as well as their Mom) - the NetGen 2.0s we've been debating.  Perhaps it's a rationalization - but I find myself being willing to invest in some tech for the girls as I want them to be comfortable with the technologies.  

IPODS:  Both girls have been asking for new iPods for a while now.  Looks like we will be doing some Nano ordering on Friday.   The girls are big into music (a benefit of not doing TV) - as I type this the girls and Julie are down stairs listening to Pandora streaming.  As Pandora streams the girls bookmark what they want from iTunes - at which point we will enter into complex negotiations about cost sharing for music purchases.  Fortunately musical tastes across the girls and Julie seem to match-up.

We had debated a Touch - as I do think the games are quite amazing and could lead to real indepence.  The problem is that we need to purchase everything *2 - and two Touches are not in the budget.  The girls also want to have iPods for their bus rides home, and a Touch  seems like something that is too expensive to bring to school.  I'm betting that our family will get one of these devices soon - as I'm already feeling quite out-of-the-loop in experimenting with the mobile Web and understanding how educational apps/content work on this device.

For Julie - the big Hannukah and Christmas combined present I think will be a new MacBook.  She has been limping along with a ~5 year old iBook G4 - which is about crawling with Web surfacing.  Basically everything that Julie does on her laptop is through a browser - so I've been kicking around the idea of saving money with a Nebook.  But alas, I have not found any Netbook with a user experience that will come anywhere close to a Mac.  

This is less a done deal....as I'm very much hoping for a Black Friday Deal - and still keeping my mind open to be convinced between now and then about going Netbook.  But if I had to guess...I'm betting that we do our Kim family / Apple stimulus package on Friday.

The link to education.  Primarily re-inforcing what we already know.  Parents of 2019 and 2021 rationalize tech purchases in terms of getting tools into their kids hands that will be necessary for education, jobs etc.  These are not so much toys but tools.

Lesson #2 - The dominance of Apple products.  My girls only want Apple products - this is the brand used at their school and by all their friends.  

Comments

[Joshua Kim]

Quick update: This blog post inspired some marital discussion (a perhaps disturbing comment on early 21st century spousal communication - but I prefer to see it in the John and Abigail Adams correspondence mode than anything else).

Anyway...Julie - ever practical - is saying a Netbook would work well. Further, she wants to wait till her iBook breathes its last (not sure if she was just trying to get me to stop talking about exponential technology curves, Moore's law, and how netbooks are improving at such great rates).

Stay tuned.

Advice always welcome. Josh