2007 Shopping List

I've been looking over the list of things I need for my business this coming year. You know, the more I'm doing print work like I wanted, the more I concede I have to get tools and equipment I didn't really care about that much in the past.

If there's things that a web-designer or programmer doesn't care about, it includes things like color calibration software, professional fonts, pantone books, etc. These things simply don't matter in the online environment. Now I find I need these things more and more...and they don't come cheap.

Pantone Book
Every print designer has one of these. I've been using my dad's old one all this time but lately I found that some of the colors on it are off. I think it's faded! What good is a faded pantone book I might as well use my eyeball to calibrate my colors. I can't believe how much these things cost though....my father once told me printers used to give these things out for free.

Monitor Calibration
Reluctantly, I think this is yet another tool I increasingly need to get so that my print & photography work looks exactly like what comes out on my printer. I've been able to get by using the aforementioned faded pantone book when I submit things to the printer, but it's getting really irritating not being able to print samples for myself at home to make sure things look good.

Canon 30D / Nikon D80
I still can't decide on this. This will probably be my last purchase at the end of this coming year as they don't come cheap. I keep checking on the prices of these things hoping that they'll just magically announce a 50% sale price on these cameras and I can scoop one up. I think this year I'll have a couple of opportunities to actually do some paid photography work...nothing big and fancy, but just a little money to do something I'm starting to like more and more. Why not?

A good chair
My back has been killing me lately. I think my mother may have been right about putting some investment into getting a really good chair. I still can't wrap my mind around spending close to a grand for an office chair, but if I'm spending hours and hours sitting here, I think I better get this before I end up with a serious back problem. I think the cheapest ergo chair I've seen so far is about $500 down at Fischer for a generic-brand ergo chair. I gotta try sitting my ass on one of these Steelcase chairs to see how they are. I think there's only one place in town that carries all these types of high-end chairs.

A good table
For anyone that's been to my home office...you know I barely have any table space. When I spread my things out to work, it's usually a combination of using parts of my table, my sofa, and the floor as my working space. Kind of sucks. On the other hand, no sense getting a table now if I may move after getting married. Besides I still can't find a good table that's simply big, wide, and flat...without a whole lot of drawers & do-dads getting in the way. I may just get this next year in 2008.

New computer
My current PC is starting to choke up a little. Not bad though, I've been using this thing since building it back in 2003....and it still runs all my Adobe suite applications without too much of a fuss, but as my files and photos are getting increasingly bigger and bigger to manage, I notice I sometimes have to watch out how many things I can run at once before I get some big error on my machine that screws everything up for me. There's a possibility I may consider an Apple this time....I hear the ones with the Intel chips demonstrate significant performance advantages with Adobe products over the PC counterparts. OK...that's a big selling point if true. In the past I actually thought a lot of programs ran super slow on the Apple machines in my former office.

New Software
I think Adobe will be releasing CS3 versions of all their programs this year. Which automatically means a few hundred dollars in upgrades this year. Sucks to have to keep up like this all the time, on the other hand, newer software versions usually means an improved workflow as new features are added.

Oh my that's a long & expensive list of things to get. Well, time to buss' ass this year huh!?