The week has been like Christmas morning, but instead of Santa Clause the UPS man delivers the goods!
My new home workspace now looks like this:
NEW DELL COMPUTER
I was thinking the main thing that will help BodyMonkey sell stuff is the shopping experience where you can view custom images and videos for most products. I’ve been doing most of the photo and video editing on my trusty Tablet PC, but that computer wasn’t designed for such process-intensive activities such as simultaneous photo and video editing….so I needed an upgrade.
I bought a 64-bit AMD Dell with a big hard drive and high performance graphics card. I probably could have built a better machine for slightly less money, but I’m in no mood to build a computer. The Dell so far has been perfect for the job. It set me back approximately $750.
NEW MONITOR
Photo editing and video editing generally takes up a lot of screen real estate, so I wanted a widescreen for a nice work area. I needed something with good resolution and a bright screen. I ended up buying a 22″ Acer widescreen monitor from TigerDirect for under $300.
I’m actually VERY pleased with how the monitor turned out to be, especially for that price!
WINDOWS VISTA AND OFFICE
I have a friend who works for Microsoft who gets MS products for deep discounts. So I ordered Windows Vista Ultimate and Office Ultimate. I usually just download pirated software, but Microsoft has become exceedingly efficient at verifying your Windows copy is legit before you can download updates.
When I ordered the Dell computer it came free with Windows Vista Home Edition….I DID NOT LIKE IT. It’s made for very novice computer user, so I’m glad I upgraded to Vista Ultimate.
Retail price of both Vista Ultimate and Office Ultimate together is something like $700+, but I got them both for $130 (Office is actually more expensive than Vista).
NEW TRIPOD
I had this GorillaPod thing for taking product photos, but after I upgraded to a real camera for product photos, the GorillaPod wasn’t sturdy enough to support the big camera. It also had short legs so it couldn’t take pictures from higher angles.
I ended up buying a professional and very sturdy tripod with extendable legs, so I can take pictures from about 6 feet in the air. I can also use this if I decide to buy a larger SLR camera or video camera in the future. This set me back about $80.
NEW PERSONAL CAMERA
My last Casio Exilim I bought was crushed somewhere between when I went to India and Germany….and half the screen is now whited out, meaning I can’t change settings or really see what kind of picture I took. Also the night pictures never came out well, so I wanted a new camera before I went to China anyway.
I bought a Cannon SD750. I don’t have much time before I leave for china, so I basically went to Best Buy, asked some guy what the best compact camera was and bought it. I’m sure money could’ve been saved if I Ebay’d it, but I don’t have that kind of time and have other stuff to focus on.
This purchase means I’ve gone through one camera per year, not including the camera I bought for product photos! This camera is AWESOME when it comes to functionality and picture quality. It set me be back about $370.
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I’m very pleased with all the purchases, especially the new computer. Having a separate computer for graphics and video editing has really increased my productivity as seen here!
