Eric's Beijing Diary

Well, I finally broke down and bought a computer last night. My old Toshiba is almost six years old. It's a company laptop I purchased from my university when I left the United States. There was some minor indication that my hard drive might be starting to go last summer, but I ignored the warning and crossed my fingers. Six years is a long time for a computer, but this really has been a very good machine. Earlier this fall, I started getting disk errors, and I knew the end was near. Actually, losing a hard drive is not a matter of life and death--they're not that terribly expensive. But, I don't know...I guess it was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I figure if I am going to change the hard drive, I might as well get a new machine now, so I can offload the old stuff.

I like computers generally. Fact is, I don't think I have ever met a computer I couldn't get along with. And I have made a lifestyle of getting the most out of legacy stuff. I have scaled down the memory allocations for the System Global Area (RAM allocated to an Oracle instance) in Oracle so that I could run an Oracle database on a laptop with 256 MB of RAM. But it is just getting to the point where there are more and more things I cannot do. I have built three courses at the Software College since I have been here. I am now working on the fourth, which is the Oracle Developer Tools. I can't run that software and an Oracle database on only 256 MB of RAM. It's just too much.

Anyway, I don't want to bore you with the arcane details of my teaching life; I merely offer that bit of information to stress that in my business, a laptop is not a luxury item. This is all the more true, given the amount of traveling I have been doing. So when my hard drive started to go, I figured it was time to get something with a little more "umph."

Some days ago, I was riding my bicycle on the campus, and I asked God to "drop a laptop in my lap." Very shortly, Rachel's boyfriend called and asked me if I was still thinking about getting a new machine. I told him that I really needed to get something pretty soon. I appreciated his offer to help me, because the cost would almost certainly be quite a bit more if I tried to handle it myself.

Yesterday, we went over to Zhonguancun, and wandered around the high-tech markets. Eason had told me quite emphatically that I should choose either an IBM or an HP. At one store we visited, I noticed an NEC. Perhaps it is my own bias, but I naturally favored a Japanese made machine. Truth is, lots of customers in China do too, the government inspired hostility to Japan notwithstanding. But Eason told me, "I can't help you, because I don't know the real price." I said, "What do you mean, the real price? But I needn't have asked. I have been down this road before. China is a barter culture, and the most important part of that process is finding out the "real" price. One of the items I buy quite often in China is phone cards. They are more expensive here than in the States (although they shouldn't be, because they are using voice over IP, but I'll leave that rant for another time), but they are usually discounted. Problem is, I am a foreigner, and they see me coming. So I took the trouble to find out what people were paying. When a student told me where to get the cards, I asked him exactly how much he paid for them. The price he quoted was about a third of the face value. So when I went there myself, I didn't ask the price. I told him how many I wanted, and quoted the price my friend had given me. As soon as it was clear that I knew the "real" price, there was no argument.

Anyway, I decided I better take Eason's counsel. We went to several places, and got several quotes. I decided to go with the HP, because it was usually about 1000 RMB less than the IBM for an equivalent machine, and because that is the kind that Eason recently purchased. After going to several places, we went to the basement, and visited a friend of Eason. He had a little shop, which was a hole in the wall with no computers. Eason told him the bottom price he had seen. He disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a box. New computer. The price was a little less than the lowest price we had been quoted. Probably about a half to two thirds of what I would have paid by myself. Just one more reminder that this is a very relational culture.