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This post is actually a little old at this point, I had started it as a draft a while back and just let it sit. You can see my few previous posts if you need any idea of why it was never written. Anyway, I still wanted to post this because even though I wrote it based on a now old comment its still relevant.
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Sarah Perez posted a message, well actually a question on Twitter and it really got me thinking…

“I still care about what mainstream web users think and feel…do you? Or do you think we should just leave them all behind?”

After giving this some thought, lately I feel like I am leaving people behind, and when I try to figure out why I cannot come up with an answer.

To give some background, I am a full time tech blogger, which means that the latest story is the hottest story and it gets old quickly, actually very quickly and we need to stay on top of what is going on. I have gotten so used to that with my online life it has started to spill out in the real world for me.

Giving it some thought, I am not sure what it really means, logically thinking is it really that exciting to know that a new (enter product name here) is coming out in (enter future time here)? Or can I be just as happy to know the details when its actually available?

I think I can describe this with a statement, although to be honest I am not sure it makes sense, but here goes…

I feel like I am living a virtual life in a real life world.

I spend most of my day and sometimes nights online, basically I live by what the latest tech news story is, and that means I pretty much live in a mixture of Firefox, Google Reader, Wordpress and Expression Engine.

The sad part is that as someone who is always looking for the latest and greatest news I often find myself taking tech for granted. Its been a long time since I was just able to enjoy something because I have already moved my focus and desire to something new, something that is “better.”

I need to be able to better define what is “better” and what is “needed.”

Sure that new (enter product name here) may be better than the previous model, but do I (or you) really need it.

I am now asking myself the question, how will it benefit me? And, are the new features really worth the extra money?

As much as I love tech, I often have to answer that with a NO. By all accounts I have an impressive home office setup, but I really could do this (tech blogging) on a crappy old desktop or laptop, but somehow I have over the years convinced myself that I needed that faster computer or bigger display, and yes somethings like large or dual displays do help productivity, but is it really needed?

Just to use cell phones as one example;

In my real life world, most of my friends have regular phones, you know, the kind that just make and receive calls and the occasional text or picture message. Me on the other hand, I have had a smartphone since the Treo 600 era and quickly jumped from one handset (and carrier) to another over the years in an effort to stay on top.

I have had a Treo 600, Treo 650, XV 6700, Treo 700w, Treo 650 (again), Sidekick 3, BlackBerry Pearl, original iPhone and now the iPhone 3G. I am also trying hard to convince myself that I do not need to pick up the G1 as a second phone. Now don’t get me wrong the iPhone 3G is a heck of a lot nicer than the Treo 600, but honestly at this point I am not even really sure that I need a smartphone or even a phone for that matter. I rarely make calls that I could not make from a home line, and I work from a home office, why do I need a smartphone when I am in front of my iMac most of the day?

Its just that on some level I feel that I need to have the latest and greatest, maybe its the online world I live in, but I need to find a way to get back to a normal life, both online and off.

I need to re-learn to appreciate technology for what it is and what I have, not what the next model will do. I once had a computer, the name does not matter but it was slow and crappy and had a 56k modem, but it got me online and that was cool and fun. Now I have an HP Mini-Note, MacBook, Compaq desktop PC and my main 24″ iMac with a secondary 20″ Apple Cinema display all tied into a 20Mbps always on connection, and you would think that would be nice, but I miss the excitement of the old days.

Somehow it seems right to have these, after all I am a tech blogger and need to be able to connect whenever and wherever, but I realize I still do the same thing as I did with my first crappy computer, I may use different programs now, Firefox instead of IE or Opera, and Mail instead of Outlook Express, but its essentially the same thing, I go online and read about stuff that interests me.

I wish I could experience that joy in tech again.