Tsunami, and Buyer Beware

First of all:

I only got wind of the earthquake and resulting tsunami late yesterday evening, and therefore would like to extend my most heartfelt condolences to the victims and their families. Growing up ingrained with the knowledge at school that we are safe from the Ring Of Fire the news came as an unexpected and sad shock.

When the world moves, everyone keeps quiet. Perhaps it's time we did some listening.

Secondly:

It's come to my attention that Sony and Nintendo's next gen handheld consoles have both entered our markets, and some unscrupulous vendors are taking advantage of that. A conversation with my favourite vendor revealed that some outlets were already selling Sony's PSP for a staggering RM 3030.00 (which is honestly three times what it's worth) and already some really rich (or stupid) people were all over themselves grabbing it.

Here's the deal, people. Nintendo's DS retails for about USD 150 everywhere else. In an ideal world, we'd be buying it for RM 600+, but we don't live in such a world; therefore you can get it anywhere from RM 888 to RM 1000. Sony's PSP would retail for about RM 600 as well if we converted the price from the Yen, so when I heard that the RM 3000 unit was already snapped up, my head just went into a spin.

I mean, seriously guys. That amount of dosh gets you a widescreen CRT unit, or a laptop, or a good home theatre kit. But then again, it's not my money. So here's a word of advice for all you hopeful owners of either of these wonderful machines:

relax. There are hardly any games out for either anyway, although the DS does play Game Boy Advance games. Give it a couple months, dust off the PS2 and log some more time on it before rushing all out to spend all your hard earned dough for the dubious distinction of paying three times more for something than it's actually worth.

End of public service announcement, have a nice day.