Further Digital

I've thrown out most of my CD cases. I'm flipping games as soon as I finish them. I've bought all of one DVD and two Blu-Rays, instead opting to use Netflix almost exclusively. I don't know where any of those are. I used to be a collector -- bordering on hoarder -- but I've taken the steps necessary to get rid of as much crap as possible from my living space. I don't miss any of it. Netflix is wonderful, games are cheaper with rebates, and online music tends to be way cheaper than its physical counterpart. Generally, I'm happy with my decisions.

The one area where I've yet to take the digital dive is books. Mostly because the idea of carrying around a kindle or iPad with me does not appeal to me in the least. I don't buy too many books a year, to be fair, but I'm a monogamous reader, so I don't suffer from carrying around two or three books. The $200 minimum needed to get into decent digital readers seems too steep when I can keep going about my business, as well as being able to flip books to mitigate the cost of buying.

And more and more, this same idea has made its way into gaming, as well. I'm the biggest proponent of digital games as you're likely to find, but I haven't bought too many full-price PC games digitally. I can't sell them back, like I would any other kind of game, so the fifty up-front charge seems to intimidating for someone who's income is severely limited. When it comes to the cheaper downloadable fare (think Xbox Live Arcade or PlayStation Network), I'm down to pay the fifteen dollars, because the price is small enough for me to swallow. Besides, I can't imagine that resell price on a fifteen dollar game would be too high.

So for now, I'm stuck somewhere between the digital future and retail past. At some point, I'd love to have everything I own on a server somewhere, because I don't fear a electronic collapse of some sort. Discs break too, and by the time something happens that renders all of our electronics useless happens, we'll have bigger worries than where our copy of Diablo 2 is.