Comex!

For the benefit of those who didn’t know, Comex 2005 was in town this weekend. And since I’ve been scouting around for a printer to replace my present one which died on me the last time I tried to print, and has remain dead since. May it rest in pieces.

So I braved the crowd and went on Sat. For those who have played pinball before, you would suddenly gain an sudden insight into what the ball feels like in the game. It was like being a sardine in a can of many more sardines squeezing about. Then once in the crowd, you get bumped and pushed around (hence, the pinball), so there was little need for actual walking. I think that I’ve never seen so many people cluster at a single location except at these computer fairs. A lot of people are like me, going there to scout for good deals, but whether they buy anything in the end, is a totally different issue altogether. Checked out all the deals from printers to digital cameras, some of them were amazingly good. However, guess what? I didn’t buy anything in the end. I was scouting for a Canon printer that had caught my eye sometime back and when I went there, they told me that it was not a focus model and they did not bring it to the show. Then they were trying to sell a lower end model very hard, with the sales personnel constantly pushing me to buy it. I wondered why till later when my mom told me that her colleague, who used to work for one of the companies there, told her that the tactic was that they would try to push the models that were soon to be replaced by something newer so as to clear all the available stock. Good if the one that they are trying to clear is the one that you want or it suits your needs. Sometimes though, these hard-sell tactics are a great turn-off if done improperly, like in this case where by every other sentence out of the salesman’s mouth was about the lower end one which I told him that I wasn’t interested in. Talk about die hard fanatic.

Next, I went over to check their rival, HP. There I saw a pretty good deal, a printer with about what I was looking for at $200 off! That made that $499 printer slightly less than $300. But what made me pop was actually the price of the cartridge refill. One was another cool $50 apiece. That would cost me about $100 a set of refills, 1/3 the price of the printer itself! Thought of buying it anyway, because I’d found a company that sells a kit to refill the original cartridge at a fraction of the original price. Decided against it later after going home. The decision went to buying new cartridges for a somewhat new printer from my brother, and later buying the refilling kit to last me till my NS is over at least. Cost effective solution, which almost cost me as much as the lower end Canon printer! ($39 to be exact.) Hmm… maybe not the cheapest, but still the most cost effective.

I went back to Comex to make this purchase the next day, with TYY joining me this time round. He drove us there, but when we got there we almost regretted that decision. Parking was hell in the area, with all the car-parks in the area being full. We managed to get a place at Marina Square eventually. Went to look for his friend who was working in the Giant there before going to join the crowd at Suntec. By the time we got there it was almost 4pm! (We went out at 2pm btw)He was looking to buy a wireless router to allow his laptop to share his internet connection. He bought the router from Linksys, whilst trying to get the salesgirl’s number at the same time. Haha… The end results? My lips are sealed. Ask him yourself. After getting all the things that we were intending to get, we decided to call it a day and went home. I must say, it is extremely tiring affair to go Comex.

On another note, Chiang Wei’s birthday is tomorrow, so

HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY CHIANG WEI!