Top 10 Things You CAN'T Have For Christmas

Zothecula writes "It's getting a little late for a last minute Christmas shopping list, but not to worry, most of us outside the Forbes Top 100 couldn't afford any of these anyway! Still, it's fascinating to look at what's possible if the word 'budget' isn't in your vocabulary, so here's a look at what you won't be getting for Christmas (CT: Warning, gizmag features really intrusive advertising) this year – the most outrageous examples of high-end overkill from 2010."

Comments

Meh

[Anrego]

Fairly poor “top 10” list. Nothing on this list was particularly extreme, and not really “geek” oriented.

I guess the problem with this kind of list is that _everything_ has an extreme. Pick something you like, and some millionaire probably has an obscenely expensive version of it. This list was mostly the extreme versions of things I have no interest in.

Often with these extreme versions they’ve just taken something existing and covered it in gold/diamonds/rare metals/rare woods.. which isn’t all that interesting to me either. I remember there was some vodka (touted as the worlds most expensive) that was basically just garden variety high-end vodka with a column of diamonds down the center.

The only thing on this list that really held any interest for me was those speakers, but at that cost it’s totally not worth the novelty, and they probably look terrible close up (as this kind of stuff tends to look great at a very specific angle but look ridiculous from everywhere else).

Ah well, can’t spend it all on philanthropic interests.. I guess after a while you run out of shit to do with that much money.

Re:Meh

[ocdscouter]

I'm pretty sure I won't be getting a hot wife for Christmas, especially from my current wife.

Well, she could, but you'd probably have to get her a hot husband in exchange.

Re:Meh

[mlts]

The speakers looked good. However other goods such as the diamond inlaid TV set were pretty pointless.

With electronics, adding bling is pretty much the best people can do for selling ultra-expensive devices. Mainly because of the economy of scale market. If a boutique company made a cell phone that was slimmer than an iPhone, and only made 100 copies, the cost would be astronomical (tens to hundreds of millions of dollars), even factoring out the fact that the device would need a lot of QA testing. The only exception would be taking a motherboard from an existing device and putting it in a custom case, perhaps replacing some components (like the camera or screen) and making sure the OS can work with the modifications. Regression testing is important too.

Re:Meh

[nospam007]

"The speakers looked good. However other goods such as the diamond inlaid TV set were pretty pointless."

They are all pointless. My one and only Christmas gift I'll get, I'm getting it every year:
Peace of mind.
Since a dozen years or so, I don't accept gifts and I don't give them so no shopping stress, no disappointments to see or feel for me.
It's heaven on earth.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that people think you are a jerk. Yeah you get what you want out of it and you haven't conformed to societal traditions, but other people like getting and giving gifts. If you feel it's gone too far, there are other ways to improve the issue that don't require robbing other people of their enjoyment of the traditions. An easy one is shop online or throughout the year and buy whenever you see something people might like. The money wasted on the gift, if you view it that way, isn't that big a deal in the end. It's just money and other things are more important.

The idea of studding something in diamonds to...

[Delusion_]

...make it the "most expensive" object in its class is more of an art stunt than a technology stunt, and a fairly unimaginative one at that. The $2.3million television is $2.3 million because it has $2.3 million worth of diamonds on it - the actual price of the television without the diamonds doesn't even change the rounding.

At what point in time is this more about the diamonds than the fact that they may or may not be attached to a gadget?

Answer: The initial concept.

It's kind of like the "most expensive pizza" being so because it's covered in luxury foods like rare caviar and then topped off with gold flakes. It's more art project than food.