The cash hemorrhage begins.

A new digital camera is on its way. I decided to go with the Canon Elph SD500 after hearing from so many people that it's an awesome camera line. Even though I mentioned that the SD500 has more megapixels than I need, Ben brought up an excellent point: given only 3x zoom, I may want to crop or zoom in on a particular detail in a picture after the photo has been taken. I also considered one of David Pogue's articles from awhile back where he recommended going with as many pixels as you can afford for similar reasons.

I spent $355.21 at Dell for the camera. This particular camera, regularly priced $399 (through the employee purchase program-- PwC is a Dell partner somehow), had a 20% discount attached, so I paid $79.80 less, making the camera $319.20. I chose 2-day shipping, which adds $12. Also, they have to charge sales tax to Illinois residents, which adds another $24.01. Again, total cost, $355.21. Not bad.

I found memory cards and a second battery were cheaper at Amazon. I spent $184.23, purchasing a 512 MB SD Ultra II memory card, a 1 GB SD Ultra II memory card, and a second battery for the camera. Luckily, that's all product cost. There is no tax charged for Illinois residents, and I was "randomly" selected to try Amazon Prime at no cost for three months, so I get free 2-day shipping on anything.

I'm doing the 2-day shipping option on this stuff because I will be in Dallas next week M-Th, and my flight to Beijing will leave on Friday at noon, so after this week, I won't be in Chicago much for a month. Also, even though I will be home for about 12 hours between Dallas and my flight to Beijing, I don't like to have expensive things like this shipped to my home address, as they tend to sit on the doorstep for several hours.

So Friday of this week, I look forward to receiving some packages.

Total spent tonight: $539.44

I'm sure I could have shopped around further and bought things cheaper still, but eventually, you just have to dig in and buy from those companies that you trust. Time to sell my old digital camera on eBay. The model I have has been going for $100-150 (with accessories). Probably an easier task once I get back.