Yay, free toys!

I think there is some conspiracy of the part of the manufacturers to provide me with free toys lately.

Usually their business is supposed to work the following way: you buy stuff, the stuff works for some decent amount of time, then it falls apart and you buy new and better stuff. Or, alternatively, you buy new stuff even before the old stuff falls apart because you want some new features.

Lately it has been working the following way: I buy stuff, the stuff falls apart before the warranty is up, they send me new (and sometimes improved) stuff for free. I am all for it, but what's in it for them?

Last week's new toys were a camera and a MP3 player. The camera is exactly the same model that has earlier produced striped and blue-faced images of Janka's and Orava's cats (none of whom is actually striped or blue), Pentax Optio WP, and the MP3 player (iLyn-something) is from some other manufacturer than the original one and a lot better. Well, it would have been hard to be worse than the Transcend player that destroyed four earphones.