Annoyingly, I have found myself in a position where I need to get a smart phone. I held out as long as I could, but for various reasons, I'm at the point where it's just easier to get one than to find another dumb phone that has the features I want. Funnily enough, companies aren't putting a lot of R&D hours/dollars into dumb phones any more!

My assumption all along was that when it did become time for me to get a smartphone, I'd get an iPhone - we're mostly an Apple house, we have an iMac desktop and my wife has an iPhone 4S and an iPad, and while I'm not a complete Apple fanboy (we also have a Windows laptop and I really like Windows 7), I generally like their stuff pretty well.

Since I don't really want a smart phone, I figured that when the iPhone 5 came out I'd get the 4S for cheap, as I figured that'd drop to $99, which it did. But then I started doing some research, and discovered that for the $99 I want to spend on a phone, I have more and maybe better options than an iPhone. There are some really good Android phones out there for that same money, so now I'm doing some research and will hopefully make a decision this weekend.

Which leads me to my question. Are there things that you buy the same brand of every time, no matter what? Or are you a purely value-driven shopper? I'm not just talking tech, either. There are things I buy the same brand of all the time: toothpaste, toilet paper, jeans, bike parts, and pens, just to name a few. Other things, I'm typically open to getting the best value on and will shop around as much as possible. What about you?


Also, it's time for my obligatory shout-out to the best bike accessory in the world - it's arm-warmer season! Those things are so freakin' handy it's amazing.

What's on your mind this week? Baseball playoffs? I know that overall adding a fifth team to the postseason isn't really a bad idea, but it's taken a lot of the drama out of this last week of the season - the question isn't "who is going to qualify" but "who is going to win and who is going to get the wild card", which while interesting, isn't quite the edge-of-seat experience we had on the last day of last season.