Jan. 2, 2021

Activated New Credit Card, Bought a 99th Percentile Laptop

8:48 AM (of Monday, January 4th 2021)

Today is Saturday, January 2nd 2021 and after getting the stimulus check yesterday, I did a bunch of online shopping, just looking at some computers here and there. I recently ordered 1 TB SSD card for my laptop a few months ago, maybe even just a month ago, but in this hedonic treadmill, that got old fast. I didn't even use up 10% of that 1 TB SSD card yet, but I was already looking for something new.

This is what my timelog looked like today:

  • Physical 1:59
  • Beat Saber 1:59
  • Intermediary 7:23
  • Preparing Food 0:03
  • Eating 0:29
  • Sleeping 6:47
  • Pooping 0:01
  • Brushing Teeth 0:03
  • Organization 0:23
  • Journal 0:23
  • Productive 0:10
  • Personal 0:10
  • Unproductive 14:05
  • Browsing 9:12
  • Adult 0:12
  • Online Shopping 4:41

Yeah I spent 5 hours just shopping online. I wasn't buying anything, but I was looking.

I looked at every computer manufacturer: HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS, Acer, MSI, Apple, and even Intel. Did you know Intel made computers? Apparently they made this new model this year (or last year), called the Intel Whitebook. The version I was looking at was $1200, and it had 64gb ram. The ram was what I was looking at the most, really. I wanted a beast with high ram. My current computer has 16gb ram, and my old "beast" computer which was a 99th percentile computer for its time, back in like 2016, had 32gb of ram. So now I was looking at computers with 64gb of ram and these cost usually $1200+.

Since I was looking on eBay though, sometimes they would sell it used for much cheaper than that. The best deal I found was a $700 one, it was an ASUS ROG gaming computer from 2016, ultra high end and powerful. The problem was the size. It was 10 pounds heavy and enormous. It's a big machine. There were a bunch of 2020 computers that had 64gb ram, and they were in a much smaller form factor. So I declined it, even though $700 is a good deal for 64gb ram, it was just too big and heavy.

Something made me start looking at 128gb ram laptops. Now on average these go for $3000+. With some going for $7000. Seriously. This is the most high end shit. Just then though, like, the listing just came up, Someone was selling a 128gb ram laptop with a XEON processor for $1400. Holy shit. I wanted to buy it right away, but my credit card limit was only $1000. So I activated a new card I had lying around. I had this card for over 8 months but I hadn't activated it since I had no use for it, but it had a credit limit of $6500. Now I could buy that laptop woohoo!

I bought that laptop but not even on the credit card. There was some PayPal offer that said, no interest if paid in 6 months. I was like, for real? I took that offer. No interest for 6 months on one of the most powerful machines ever? Wow that's the best deal ever. I watched some videos online of this machine, after I had bought (because confirmation bias and whatnot) and one Benchmark testing someone did got 99th percentile results. It said his machine was in the 99th percentile. Holy shit!

Anyway I could make a billion arguments about how this purchase was justified, but really, I don't need it. It's some vanity, selfish thing I did. I already have a powerful 32gb machine that I use for work, so this 128gb is a bit excessive. And any performance differences will really be negligible considering my machine is already so powerful (I can already play any games I want, and run any programs, etc). But anyway, this machine will be smaller and lighter than my current 17.3" laptop, because it's a newer 17.3" laptop and they managed to shrink the size just a bit during that time. In this new laptop I can store 4 SSDs, which means I can have 4 operating systems just on this one machine. I actually have two machines, one is for work and has Windows, and my personal one has linux. Now I can have both on the same machine, and install a bunch of other ones too!

The rest of the day wasn't much. Even though I spent like 5 hours just window shopping a bunch of computers, I had a fun time doing that. I also played Beat Saber for 2 hours today, and I got an almost top 1000 score on the song Beat Saber. I got rank 1048 or something. Am I one of the top 2000 players in the world? Maybe, because I consistently have a top 2000 score in almost every song. I have maybe 3 songs that are in the top 1000 too. However when I play online against people, I often get 2nd place, like 80% of the time I am 2nd place. Other times I'm first. I'm rarely 3rd and lower. There's usually one guy that plays it so much better than me.

Anyway that was my day today. I can't wait for the laptop to arrive.

Written by JustMegawatt

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