I never did get around to saying what the other toys I want to save up for are! I should probably add that at the rate I am able to save the timescale is probably years, but I can still dream.
So, got my eye on the Garmin Etrex range, either the Legend (~140 squid) or the Venture (~115 squid), the former having 8Mb mapping, the latter just 1MB Points Of Interest capability. For an extra 25 pounds it seems silly not to have the extra mapping stuff…
Also wondering about updating my PDA. Having now thoroughly abandoned my filofax, I depend on my Palm for everything. It’s a very old Palm III, and I picked up for 20 quid or something – but it would be nice to have a PDA that was a bit faster, had a brighter (colour) display, non-volatile memory (so I don’t lose everything if the battery drains), and better connectivity options (i.e. bluetooth and WiFi, with a web browser and e-mail client to boot). The Tungsten E2 seems to nicely fit this bill (and does MP3) – it doesn’t do WiFi, although you can buy an SDIO card to fix that. Trouble is that these too are around 140 pounds – add the WiFi card are we’re talking 200. Another 20 quid for a bluetooth dongle for the PC, and we’re well into the year 2008… I presume it’s possible to get an ssh client for Palm?
The last toy is a new lens for my camera – specifically the “bigma” (aka Sigma 50-500mm F4-6.3 EX APO RF HSM), which I would be the first to admit is just plain barking (especially at 600 pounds or so), but I’m a bit of a zoom freak and just want to get closer and closer. Combine with my camera’s 1.6x effective focal length, and we’re talking a 850mm lens, and that’s before the 2x teleconverter! The lens is hopelessly impractical – it’s big, heavy, and slow… but a lens with this range is hugely flexible, and I’ve seen some awesome photos taken with it… Still, well and truly in the realms of retirement presents now, but I can dream… 🙂