And we invite those people to speak on a public event for charity... On international women's day, 8 March, no less. The shame... :(

If a customer of a fast food restaurant throws a cup of hot coffee over his or her lap, who is responsible?
If a woman puts her wet dog in the microwave oven to dry, who is responsible?

Now compare that to how a US judge what answer those questions.

I rest my case.

I work as a programmer, so I know how buggy software usually is, so I do not have a smartphone. And I leave my mobile phone at home when I go out, just because I do not want to be reachable everywhere and at anytime. And navigating in unknown territory is a fun adventure without an electronic map. :-)

But I agree with you as well. Many people have a smartphone, so for them the expense for a fitness tracker would be less than a few hundred bucks. (unless they get a very high end running watch, but that is a different category altogether)

Could you theoretically make a living from just walking, if you would make, say 20 or 30 miles per day?

If you have to charge your phone daily, it might be high time for a new battery. I have to charge mine only every three weeks or so. With a few longer calls maybe every two weeks.

If you already have a smartphone, the story is a bit different, I agree.

If you want a device that does a lot more, that may also be OK. But it makes sense only when you would also use all those features. If I would just like something that monitors my fitness, I would not be tempted to buy a device that can do a lot of other things as well. If I am looking for a chair, I will not buy a car, just because it is four chairs with a whole lot of extra stuff. And I would not like to take the time to get acquainted with a smart phone, while I could master a fitness tracker in a few minutes. But then again, that is just personal.

(Moreover, fitness trackers are far more shock and water/sweat resistant than smartphones) :-)

But smartphones are a lot more expensive than fitness trackers. Moreover, they tend to be far more complicated devices. Moreover, they are quite big and inconvenient to carry along when practicing fitness. So, actually, they are not so good at all for this purpose.

That depends where you look in the range. You can safely assume hat 10k amps and ridiculous cables are obviously top high end. You can get an amp for 20 bucks at a low end store. Its quality will be shitty, but it that will be the other end of the range. I think many more people will have an amp below 100 dollar, than one above 1000 dollar, but that is just intuition that may be wrong.

Let us assume the scale to be logarithmic. Then, alright, 600 dollars is slightly above mid range. :-)

Well, They go second hand here for a thousand euros. About 1130 dollars ;-) (site in Dutch) http://www.marktplaats.nl/a/au... That is still pretty impressive for speakers. ;-)

Thanks! Mmmm. :-) Fun story: http://www.klipsch.com/blog/ga... I will keep my eyes open in second hand stores. :-)

It gets rather good reviews almost everywhere I look. And for 600 bucks, I would go for somewhat expensive.

So, which are speaker/amplifier combinations you speak of?

Once I changed my old Phillips amplifier for a nice second hand Harman Kardon, I noticed how good my speakers really were. :-) But I will not buy these special ridiculous multi-hundred-euro/dollar/whatever cables that some audiophiles price so much (while plugging the amplifier in the rusty wall plug).

So second hand you can good quality for low-price

It is now safe to say that the smartphone is more than just a hype, now. As they become bigger, the legal duet between Samsung and Apple will become a threesome. I wonder how they will keep up there.