The first month of 2022 is almost over. How did it go in terms of avoiding new purchases? This month went quite well, with two exceptions:
- To protect our nearly 170-year-old wooden floor, I bought a mat (see photo below). I couldn’t find one secondhand.
- The second item wasn’t supposed to be new, as I bought it used on eBay Kleinanzeigen. But it turned out to be brand new: an Oculus Quest 2. I had researched the VR headset on Amazon but didn’t buy it because of my anti-consumption vow, and when I found a used one nearby, I bought it. The seller had bought two and now needed money. But why on earth would I really need a VR headset?
I’m working on a new book project that will include a chapter on the metaverse and VR. I also wanted to try Horizon Workrooms for virtual meetings, maybe even in a classroom setting. However, I’ve realized that very few people I know own such a device, so virtual meetings will be challenging. Of my current 60 students, only one owns a headset—actually, it’s her partner’s. That’s already an interesting insight for the book, as it seems the network effect is not so easy to achieve here. Thanks to the headset, I also discovered that I still enjoy boxing after all these years, and I lose 100 calories every 10 minutes. But overall, it doesn’t feel good to have bought it.
However, I didn’t buy the Quest without selling something else. After barely using it for a few years, I sold my Ableton Push 2 on eBay (a piece of it is also visible in the photo). I sold it for the same price I paid for the Quest. I’ll probably sell the Quest after the book project is done. I sold my previous Quest for the same price I paid for it, so I hope this device won’t cost me any money in the end. The Ableton Push 2 cost me a lot of money since I only used it three times. So I paid about €200 per use. If I factor in the money I got back, it’s about €66 per use.
Other than that, I didn’t buy anything else this month, either new or used. To be honest, I had considered buying a Network Attached Storage (NAS), and although I could easily justify that I needed it for my work, I decided against it and stuck with my low-cost Open Media Vault solution using a Raspberry Pi. It’s not a particularly beautiful solution since all the parts are exposed, but it’s a low-maintenance option. Digital gadgets pose a challenge to my goal. Maybe I’ll write an article about that too.
The total result: €25.41 spent in January.