Spent $180 on a second monitor and it backfired hard

I panicked when a client moved a deadline up by two weeks. Thought a dual screen would make me faster. Dropped $180 on a cheap monitor from Best Buy. Turns out my laptop can't handle two screens and my design software at the same time. Everything lagged. I spent three hours troubleshooting instead of working. Lost more time than I saved. Has anyone else bought gear in a panic and regretted it?

3 comments

3 Comments

kai_ramirez382d ago

My buddy Dave did something similar a few years back. He bought a top of the line gaming mouse because he thought it would help him finish his graphic design projects faster. Spent about $120 on it. Turns out the extra buttons just confused him and he kept hitting them by accident. He spent a whole weekend trying to remap the buttons and finally gave up and went back to his old $20 mouse. The fancy one is still sitting in a drawer somewhere. He still jokes about it whenever I mention upgrading anything.

the_faith1d ago

That story about Dave and the gaming mouse is too real. It's funny how we think expensive gear will magically fix our workflow problems when really it just adds more confusion. I've been there with software plugins thinking they'd make me more creative but they just sat there unused. The part about the mouse sitting in a drawer hits close to home because I have a drawer full of "upgrades" that turned out to be downgrades. Sometimes the cheap stuff is the best because you're not scared to use it.

bell.jessica2d ago

Oh man, that's a classic. You spent $180 to learn that your laptop's graphics card is basically a potato. I respect the hustle though, panic buying gear is a sport at this point. At least you didn't drop $600 on a monitor stand like that one guy on Reddit did last month. Your laptop probably would have just bluescreened in protest.