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I came to Singapore in 1999 to study in NTU. Over the last nine years in Singapore, I have bought necessary (and many times unnecessary) items for personal use. This time, let’s focus on gadgets. By gadgets, I mean anything related to computers, mobile phones, Pocket PCs, and cameras, from big ticket items like laptop purchase to small items like RAM upgrade or thumb drives or blank DVDs.

When I consolidated all these numbers, the result was eye-opening to say the least. Never have I expected myself to spend over S$20K over these nine years to buy all these items. It’s S$20,332.86 to be exact. And that excluding items that I may have missed.

To understand how this number came about, I tried to analyse them by category.

No surprise here, any purchases related to computer (including desktops and laptops) will be significantly higher compared to mobile phones or cameras.

To see when all these gadgets were bought will help to analyse how much I’ve spend over the years.

Back in 1999, PCs were expensive, my first Intel Pentium III 450MHz machine cost over S$2,000. Now, even my Pocket PC has a processor that’s 50% faster. Two years that followed, I fared rather well, spent less than S$1,000 for RAM upgrade, blank DVDs, graphic card, mobile phones, and all sort of small items along the way. I upgraded my PC in 2002 as I brought my first PC back to Jakarta for office use. The spike in 2003 was when I bought my first-ever laptop, Acer Travelmate 800 (to utilise student price before I graduated, but still cost S$3,300 nonetheless ), a mobile phone, and first-ever Pocket PC, hp iPAQ 2210 (to utilise staff price that was half the market price).

Thankfully, after I started my first job in 2003, the trend went downhill from 2004 onwards (for once, downhill means good ). In 2004, two biggest purchases were well, two LCD monitors. I bought Philips 17″ LCD monitor to replace my 15″ CRT monitor that was spoilt anyway, and half-a-year later, I bought Samsung 17″ LCD monitor when my parents asked for my Philips LCD monitor to be brought back to Jakarta.

Early 2005, I bought a CPU fan, trying to reduce noise of my CPU when it’s working hard. Days later, I accidentally damaged the processor and motherboard when trying to install the CPU fan :’( That’s when I spent unplanned S$550 to replace the motherboard, CPU, and memory. That year also saw me managed to convince my dad to allow me to buy a compact digital camera in Panasonic Lumix FX-8. I ended 2005 by upgrading my 40GB hard drive to a 250GB one. By that time, I needed a lot of disk space to store my family ever increasing collection of photos and videos.

Expenses in 2006 were even lower, notable purchases were Dell Axim X51v, again at half the market price, RAM upgrade to 2GB when I upgraded from XP to Vista, and the excellent 3.2MP camera of Sony Ericsson K800i when I renewed my contract with Starhub.

I tried to stop myself from big purchases in 2007, and that clearly worked well as the only big expenses were a 320GB Western Digital external hard disk, to backup my files as well as to keep family photos and videos that seems to grow exponentially (it’s a hyperbole, but you know what I’m talking about).

Whatever I saved in 2007 was blown away by the turn of the year. We’re not even half-way through 2008, but I’ve already spent S$2,500 for two laptops, one Compaq Presario V3688 and an Apple Macbook (white). How laptop prices has dropped so far that in five years, whatever I spent in 2003 for one laptop can get me three nowadays.

Out of so many purchases over the years and months, were they good buys?

I hope so. I think so. I reckon they were all good buys, although sometimes they were not bought at the most appropriate time I feel. After all, is there ever a good time to buy gadgets? Tracing back on where all those gadgets are now, less than a quarter of their original purchase value are still with me now. Close to S$5K worth of PC components and mobile phones are now spoilt, due to aging and/or accidental knocks and bumps. The Acer Travelmate 800 laptop is still actively used by my brother, and S$3.3K worth of laptops, LCD monitors, thumbdrives, mouse, and mobile phones are used by my dad and mom, at home or in office.

The rest have already been sold, consumed (like blank DVDs), no longer used, or have been given to friends who can make a better use of some of them. A small portion were stolen when my house in Jakarta was broken into, and I hope that portion in the pie chart doesn’t get any bigger, ever.

Anyone here ever tried to list down your purchases over the years and see how much you’ve spent for gadgets? What do you think about mine? Have I simply bought too much?