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My eBay auctions have been going well. Selling stuff I don't need or want anymore is proving reasonably profitable. I have some Job Lots to put together over the weekend of various PC items (CDroms, cables, cards, etc, etc), so that should clear a load more space.
Then I shall start on clearing my Amiga stuff out of the garage - keeping just what I need. That, plus I have a complete A4000D in a Mediator case with gfx, network, 060 card, etc that I will put up there. That should net me a tidy sum (although some is owed to the guy that gave me it in the first place).
I noticed yesterday on one Amiga.org that a guy in the UK had sold his a600.net machine. An A600 with a 68030 card and loads of extras - it went for �62 odd. The '030 card is worth �100 alone. If only I had kept an eye on that one. Ho-hum!
While walking out of the school playground this morning, after dropping Rhiannon at her classroom, I overheard 3 mothers talking about something technical. How to get MP3s onto an MP3 player. Technology is everywhere, but unfortunately, some people still haven't grasped it properly. The conversation went like this:
Mother1: So how do I get the MP3s onto it?
Mother2: Have you downloaded some?
Mother1: Downloaded what?
Mother3: The MP3s?
Mother1: I have to download them? Where from? How do I do that?
(at this point I realised how much people don't know. She had an MP3 player - probably bought because "other people have got them" - but didnt really know why she was buying it... The other mothers then recommended varying sites to get them from)
Mother1: So once I have downloaded some, what do I do next?
Mother2: On the "thingy", you have to take the cover off the end and plug it in.
Mother3: Yes. Plug it into the "wotsit ports" on the PC.
Mother1: Wotsit ports?
Mother2: Yeah - the [thinks] "UPS" port.
Mother3: Yeah. Then the PC sees the "thingy" and you can just copy the MP3s to it
Mother1: Just copy them? How do I do that?
And therein, lies the problem.
MP3 players are incredibly simple pieces of technology, designed so that the most basic of consumers can operate them. Unfortunately, the manufacturers rely on the fact that the consumer in question has some inkling of how to actually use a computer in the first place and can understand how to get the MP3s onto the MP3 player to listen to them!
And getting advice from people who obviously aren't completely sure about what they are talking about anyway, is a sure fire way to get even more confused than you were in the first place.
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