{"id":206,"date":"2009-04-02T20:52:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-02T20:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2009\/04\/02\/206\/"},"modified":"2012-06-13T19:38:04","modified_gmt":"2012-06-14T00:38:04","slug":"206","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=206","title":{"rendered":"Time for a Classic Cheap Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I gripe every so often about things changing too fast. Let’s say that you buy something that works well and does what you need it to do. Eventually it wears out, so you try to buy a new one. But surprise, surprise, they no longer make it. Once in a very blue moon the newer stuff is better, but too often it just doesn’t work as well. That’s just another side-effect of our dynamic post-industrial capitalist economy (along with worsening distribution of wealth, sub-prime mortgages, the shuttering of Detroit and complex derivative investment instruments that defy mark-to-market accounting, or any other sort of accounting). <\/p>\n

So it’s nice when you can still buy a classic. My Uncle Bruno passed away about 10 years and several months ago, and my brother and I had to clean out his apartment and settle his estate. We didn’t charge fees for our services to the other family members who inherited his net assets. But in return, we did pick out a few small-ticket, low-value items from his stash for our own use. My own booty included a Casio digital watch, the F28W. It was a rather low-budget watch, as my uncle was living a low-budget life (which was too bad, as he deserved better). It didn’t do much, but it did tell you the time and date. Also it was light and comfortable to wear, so I starting using it more and more. After a while it became my main wristwatch. I expected it to crap-out after a few years, but it kept on running as the new millennium progressed. About a month ago, the watch reached the ten-year mark with me. <\/p>\n

But all good things must end, and my late uncle’s cheap-o Casio finally blanked out last week. I was told that it wasn’t worth having the battery replaced, as it would cost more than an equivalent new watch. So it was time to look for an equivalent new watch. As a starting point, I went on Google to see if anyone had a good recommendation for an F28W equivalent. It turned out that the most equivalent watch is the F28W! They still make it, and it looks the same. So I found a decent deal on Ebay ($14 with shipping) and punched in my order. And the package arrived today. So here’s the new watch on my wrist next to the old one, that had served me so well. The biggest difference is that the old one was made in Malaysia, whereas the new one comes from — where else? — China. We shall see if the Chinese do as well. <\/p>\n

Sometimes simple is better, or so says the Casio web site. Most of the reviews on the Amazon site pretty much agree (but they’re correct about the plastic band breaking within two years; I’ll use the cloth band that I was using with the old one once it does). It’s nice, just for once, to find something old that the modern world still can’t beat. P.S., this isn’t the so-called “Casio terrorist watch”<\/a>; that would be the fancier F91W. Mine came from some Jewish merchant in Brooklyn; the box was packed with Hebrew-language newspaper pages!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I gripe every so often about things changing too fast. Let’s say that you buy something that works well and does what you need it to do. Eventually it wears out, so you try to buy a new one. But surprise, surprise, they no longer make it. Once in a very blue moon the newer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2798,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions\/2798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}