PR and marketing people hate it when journalists describe products as ‘cheap’. We get phone calls asking us to change the word to ‘budget’ or ‘affordable’.
That’s because while ‘cheap’ means you can get something at a low price, it has a secondary meaning where the word can be used to mean ‘inferior’.
It’s not as though ‘budget’ doesn’t have a similar implication when the word is used as an adjective. No-one thinks a budget airline is going to deliver a good experience.
Oh yeah?
There’s a “says who?” problem with ‘affordable’.
That $3000 laptop might be affordable to a marketing manager. A bus driver or nurse might not consider it affordable.
Journalists should not use words like that. There’s a risk of making readers feel bad about themselves. There’s a danger we’re acting as unpaid promoters when using the language of marketing.
We’re not perfect. I searched my site and found I have used the word 40 times over 13 years and 1500 posts.
In many cases the word is a quotation.
Guilty of using cheap
Yet, your honour, at times I’m guilty as charged.
I’ve used ‘affordable’ at least a dozen times without stopping to think there could be readers who don’t agree with that word choice.
The same logic applies to the word ‘inexpensive’. My inexpensive might not be your inexpensive.
Much of the time journalists use words like ‘cheap’ or ‘affordable’ to contrast with ‘expensive’ or ‘unaffordable’.
Now there are two words that would get a marketing person annoyed if they appeared in a story about a product.
Although not always. The Samsung sales executives showing off the company’s folding phones a year ago were happy to position the product at the premium end of the range. A high price can be a marketing strategy.
As can ‘cheap’. Yet for some reason marketing people prefer that we don’t mention that.
I wrote this for the Sydney Morning Herald in 2007. It’s now a piece of history.
If smartphones haven’t killed off traditional handheld computers yet, the day can’t be far away. Sales of non-phone Palm and PocketPC devices are stagnant or falling. There’s been nothing much in the way of new hardware for a couple of years.
Sure, but something huge was on the way.
This is a pity. I’ve found my $500 Palm T|X to be one of my most productive tools. It goes way beyond managing my contact file and calendar information.
My word, what low expectations we had in those days.
The T|X has a 3.8 inch 480 by 320 display. While you wouldn’t call it large, it’s half as big again as the screen on most smartphones.
But tiny by today’s standards.
It makes reading text, browsing web pages, viewing photographs and even watching movies a better experience than squinting at a smartphone display.
Which was true at the time.
The 128MB of built-in memory doesn’t sound much by today’s standards, yet I’ve got a dozen or so applications running on my handheld and scores of stored documents. If I need more memory, I simply slot in an SD card.
That sounds even less now.
And we’re not talking about any old documents. The T|X comes with a bundled version of Documents To Go, an application that allows you to read and, in a limited way, edit, Word or Excel files. It can also be used to read .pdfs, making it the nearest thing to an electronic book.
OK, this looks a bit daft today, but at the time the T|X was a realistic ebook reader.
The T|X’s best feature is its built-in WiFi. When I’m travelling around the city, I stop for coffee where’s there’s a free hot spot and catch up on emails. Sure you can do this anywhere with a smartphone – but the bigger screen makes a difference.
WiFi is still wonderful.
I use WiFi to sync my Palm with my desktop before leaving home and then reverse the process when I return.
This was a novelty.
The T|X isn’t perfect, text entry is clumsy and the battery won’t make it through an extended working day if the wireless is switched on. Yet, all-in-all, it manages to better the specification of smartphones in most departments. When I’m on business away from home I carry a smartphone and a T|X.
No doubt a phone manufacturer will marry the features of the T|X with a smartphone before much longer – judging by the announced specifications Apple’s forthcoming iPhone could get there first.
Sir Clive Sinclair, the inventor and entrepreneur who was instrumental in bringing home computers to the masses, has died at the age of 81.
His daughter, Belinda, said he died at home in London on Thursday morning after a long illness. Sinclair invented the pocket calculator but was best known for popularising the home computer, bringing it to British high-street stores at relatively affordable prices.
Many modern-day titans of the games industry got their start on one of his ZX models. For a certain generation of gamer, the computer of choice was either the ZX Spectrum 48K or its rival, the Commodore 64.”
My first brush with Sinclair was as an A-level student in the UK. Before he made computers, Sinclair designed a low-cost programmable calculator.
It fascinated me and, thanks to a well-paid part-time job, I managed to buy one. From memory it could only handle a few programmable steps, but it was enough to make complex calculations.
My second job after university was working as a reporter for Practical Computing magazine. I started in January 1980 and quickly became familiar with the original Sinclair ZX80 computer.
Later that year I went to the launch of the ZX81 and met Sinclair for the first time. Over the next few years he became a familiar face.
That modest, clunky ZX81 computer changed everything. Before 1981 was out, the publishing company I worked for started Your Computer magazine which focused on small, low-cost home computers. For the first few issues I was staff reporter on both titles.
The next two years were a wild roller coaster ride. An entire industry emerged and I was in the centre of it.
ZX Spectrum was Sinclair’s definitive product
For me, Sinclair’s most important product was the ZX Spectrum. It was flawed in many ways, but it could do enough to spawn a generation of entrepreneurs and get thousands of young people into computing. I still have one in my attic.
By the time the later Sinclair QL appeared, low-cost computers with decent keyboards and storage were pushing out the minimal, low-cost options Sinclair specialised in.
By now Sinclair was Sir Clive. My last brush with his business was the ill-fated C5 battery powered vehicle. It failed and Sinclair faded from sight, later the remnants of his computer business were picked up by Amstrad.
My main memories of Sinclair were his enthusiasm and his ambitions to build devices that anyone, regardless of budget, could afford.
I wrote this post in 2009 when spending one day a week offline was far less challenging than it is today. These days I might only get a day away from all digital screens every month or so.
Here’s the idea:
Set aside one day a week when you don’t switch your computer on.
A day when you don’t check mail, update Facebook or tweet.
No firing up the desktop for game playing.
It doesn’t need to be the same day every week. You may have to trim things according to needs and deadlines. You may only be able to manage one day a fortnight.
Go off-line and let the brain rest. Or, if not rest, allow it to change gear.
Take a break instead of constantly responding to incoming messages. Just let them pile up.
There’s always tomorrow.
You can de-stress. And before you say you find it stressful not being in constant touch with cyberspace, think again. You know that isn’t true.
The online world will go on without you.
Read books, chat to friends, play sport, enjoy the sunshine or bake muffins instead.
That way, when you get back online, you’ll be refreshed. It is like a mini holiday. It may sound like a cliché, but I work better after taking a day-long break from my computer.
Digital sabbath not original
The digital sabbath is not an original idea. If you are religious, the first sabbath came at the end of the first recorded week. The Biblical creation story says God rested on the seventh day.
Ancient Jews worked for six days then strictly observed the Shabbat when many everyday things were not allowed. They knew this was mentally and physically healthy.
I
first heard about the idea of a digital sabbath in an online forum – sadly I don’t recall who or where the original idea comes from.
Problems
It is harder to take even one day’s rest from the digital world if you have a smartphone, an ebook reader or if you use the computer as an entertainment hub for music and video. And you may have a job, or some other responsibilities that make going off-line difficult.
Nevertheless, I suggest you do what you can to give it a try, reconnect once a week with the analogue world.
I’m not perfect
I’d like to report I take a full day away from my computer every week. The truth is, I don’t always manage it. Although I try to schedule a full day off each week, I generally only get a couple of full-blown digital sabbaths each month.
Originally published December 2011. Updated January 2026. After 40+ years in technology journalism, this principle remains central to my work.
Why detachment matters in journalism
The percentage may have changed slightly—technology has seeped deeper into everyone’s lives since 2011—but the core principle hasn’t: maintaining distance from geek culture makes for better technology journalism.
This isn’t about lacking technical knowledge. It’s about perspective. Technology journalists serve readers, not industry insiders. The moment you write primarily for other technology enthusiasts rather than the people who actually use technology in their daily lives and work, you’ve failed your audience.
I’m not comfortable when I’m with other technology journalists who want to talk about Star Trek or Dungeons and Dragons.
To say these things don’t interest me is an understatement.
We have science fiction books on our shelves at home. Visitors to our house assume they are mine. They are not. They belong to Mrs B. And apart from her reading tastes, she is even less geeky than me.
Computers do not mean geek
Most of the points I scored on the geek test come from work. After all, I’ve spent years writing about computers and technology, I know the difference between a Rom and a Ram.
Of course, I have more than one dictionary. It’s a journalist thing – they are tools of my trade. And yes, I confess I correct people’s grammar. Editing has been my job for most of my adult life.
In the past, people have commented on my non-geek status making me the wrong person to edit a newspaper’s computer pages, run a computer magazine or write about technology.
Detached
I disagree. A level of detachment means I can make better rational decisions. I’m less tempted to air my prejudices. It means I write for ordinary people, not geeks. In fact one of the skills I’m most proud of is being able to explain tricky things in plain English.
I’m a journalist first, technology specialist second. I can – and have – written about most subjects.
And anyway, most of my work has been writing for non-geek audiences. My lack of geekiness means I can better serve their needs.
This approach proved especially valuable when covering New Zealand’s technology industry. Local companies need journalists who can explain their innovations to potential customers and investors, not just other technologists. Being able to translate technical developments into business and economic terms serves both the industry and the public better than insider jargon ever could.
The same applies when covering telecommunications regulation, business model challenges in media, or the impact of technology on society. These stories require understanding the technology, but they’re fundamentally about people, economics, and social change.
My journalism training taught me to ask “why should readers care?” before “how does this work?” That order matters. Geeks often reverse it.
Journalism first, technology second
This reader-first approach shaped how I’ve covered journalism itself. When publishers struggled with digital transformation, the story wasn’t about the technology—it was about business models, audience relationships and sustainable journalism.
When paywalls and subscriptions became necessary, the challenge wasn’t technical implementation but convincing readers of the value proposition. When ad-blocking threatened publishers, it was fundamentally about the broken relationship between readers, publishers, and advertisers.
Technology enables or constrains these developments, but it’s never the whole story. That’s why detachment from geek culture remains an asset, not a liability.
More on journalism and media:This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism practice, business models and the craft of technology reporting:
It doesn’t drive much traffic to my website, if any… but it gives me a lot of what Twitter no longer can. Also, it meshes nicely with Mastodon.
My site traffic is down by between 20 and 30 per cent now I’m not active on Twitter. I could make a faustian pact to get that traffic back, but at least I’m comfortable with myself.
My segment on RNZ Nine-to-Noon programme yesterday.