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Won a gift card...camera lens or netbook

dr.devious

dr.devious

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 30, 2008
206
56
Truckee Meadows, NV
I won a $400 AMEX Gift Card through work and now I am debating whether I should use it to buy a lens or a netbook...

I have a Canon XS with the kit lens and a 75-300mm
 
A rather personal question - Do you already have a laptop? Do you find yourself needing other lenses?
 
leighonigar said:
A rather personal question - Do you already have a laptop? Do you find yourself needing other lenses?
Click to expand...

I don't think that is a personal question...I have an Aluminum MacBook 2.0GHz with 4GB RAM. I have been eye ballin the this lens or the 50mm f1.8.
 
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Of course it's a personal question - it depends entirely on circumstance.

I myself would get a lens, as I have a netbook and I don't use it that much.
 
You have a good laptop and crappy lenses. Get a lens. ;) The Tamron you linked to would be OK. The Sigma 24-70 mm f/2.8 is also very nice because you can shoot wider. I'd recommend the new model just because it's smaller than the old one, although the old one was pretty decent.
 
In a very general sense I would say the lens would be more valuable/useful to you than the netbook. Though your personal needs may dictate otherwise.

Though keep in mind that those Amex giftcards probably dont have an expiration on them so maybe you can hold off for a few months and see if you can add some cash to expand the options. If nothing else, you should be able to get through to the next Canon sale without losing any value.
 
Sigma 17-70mm. or if you don't care for the wide end, get rid of the lens you have now and grab a 70-200 f/4.
 
The first Athlon NEO ultraportable just came out. Netbooks are in a state of flux.
 
Netbooks aren't really that useful for people that already have a laptop, especially a Macbook or Macbook Pro as the portability isn't that much improved with a netbook. The only real reason I see to get a netbook is if you want something cheaper that you can take places you wouldn't take your Macbook but even then ~$400 is still a lot to risk in such situations.

Netbooks are best for those that either don't have a computer at all or only have a desktop or have an aging clunky laptop.

With that being said if Apple does release a netbook or similar then I will probably still by that but no way is that going to be under $400 so I say go with the lens!
 
But don't bother with the 50/1.8. If you have $400 you want to spend, get a better lens. So of the other ones mentioned would fit the bill. Or some good primes. I love my Canon 35/2 and Sigma makes a good 30/1.4
 
Depends, for me I just got a netbook, I could have got a lens but I am really loving the netbook, I got a dell mini 9 from dell on the one day sale day for 180 something and put 2gb of ram and a 8gb sd card for storage, I put a few old games on it like rollercoaster tycoon 1 and 2, sims, sim city, a few emulators, and Microsoft Word, oh and I forgot to mention I loaded it up with windows 7.

I really love it, I get about 3:30 hours with win 7 and it runs very fast, maybe faster than XP, and its alot easier to carry around campus than my unibody mb pro. And if I drop it it won't be more than $200 to fix, you cant say the same thing about the macbook.
 
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