"I USED TO BE an early adopter, but I’m alright now,” should be my next T-shirt slogan, or maybe it should just be tattooed straight onto my forehead. For a long time I was an ‘early adopter’ of various bits of tech wizardry. I never camped outside stores in a sleeping bag though. I’m sad, just not that sad.

Early adopters are like a cross between excited children on Christmas morning – except 365 days a year – and hardcore masochists. They also tend to have cash to spare [although sometimes not] because being an early adopter is not a pauper’s game. The excitement bit is easy to understand. I still react a tad giddily at something shiny that promises to do lots of things well, including stripping my bank account bare. These days though my dance of joy is mostly on the inside, my geek buried deep. The masochistic element emerges when early adopters are inevitably crapped on from a great height by the product’s maker.

This crap takes many forms (rapid price cuts, poor support, bad first generation products etc.) but no matter the disguise, it’s always guaranteed. Early adopters know this and, for the most part, accept it because, like masochists, they keep coming back for more of the same. From the financial kick in the nuts to the realisation that you’re just the kind of mug vendors love, masochism is the yang to the yin of the childish excitement that new gadgets engender.

I used to be a devil for buying new graphics cards in PCs. Anyone that has ever forked out for the latest performance cards will know that they are not cheap. However, I would sometimes buy two or three in a year, just to raise the frame rate at higher resolutions or for smoother playback. I’d buy them on Day One and pay full price. If it was an ATI card and two months later nVidia was planning to topple it – I’d be all over the games mags and sites, checking specs and saving like a lunatic.

I’ve also pulled the same stunt with home cinema kit, from the first progressive scan DVD players to today’s upscaling players – at one time there were five working DVD players (none more than nine months old) in a house with just two TVs. Santa Claus was good to the in-laws that year. Thankfully, I’m cured. A wife standing in the doorway with a bag, uttering “Me or the technology” can have a sobering effect.

This year has been a bad year for some early adopters – hell, even late adopters. Take the iPhone. Just two months after US fanatics queued around the block for days to pay a fortune for Apple’s funky phone, the company knocked 33 per cent off the price just eight weeks later. Now that’s what you call a real kick in the balls. That’s enough to test the masochistic commitment of most early adopters. In return they got some Apple vouchers – but not to the value of what they lost. – and only those that bought an iPhone within 14 days of the price cut got refunded. Ouch! What about the PS3? Lots of people took the plunge – not as many as Sony would have hoped – but the prices fell recently too. To be fair though, Sony held out a long time and the early adopters only felt a tiny nipple tweak compared to what usually happens. However, those that got it in recent months will be undergoing the full pliers/scrotum episode.

As for the Xbox 360, I was late to the table on that one, just like I was with the PS2. When I finally got the chunky PS2, it was just four weeks before Sony launched the slim PS2 and cut the price on my one so I felt like a complete dork.

With the 360, I bought into it last October and was less than chuffed this year to be covering stories on the arrival of the Xbox 360 Elite, complete with HDMI, 120GB hard disk drive etc, etc. My only saving grace was that in September my Xbox Premium contracted the much-publicised Ring Of Death and I got to bring it back under warranty, pay just £20 extra, and go home with the Elite. Great, until I discover that that Microsoft has been disseminating models quietly with the newer 65nm chipset which makes the console sound less like a hoover when it’s on.

Earlier this year I bought a Philips AmbiLight HDTV – on average it cost about £300 more than rival TVs but the reviews were good and I had seen, and liked, the AmbiLight technology in action. It died within four days of some nasty green screen disease. I got a replacement and was happy for all of two weeks, when Philips introduced some new models and my one got a £400 price cut. I still hurt from that one but am thankful I never bought the first generation AmbiLight TVs because they cost more than twice what I paid.

Early adopters are a breed apart. For some that translates as ‘stupid idiots’ while for others it means people who are passionate about their technology, regardless of the pitfalls. While pitfalls are many and inevitable, some people early adopters are willing to accept the pain for those few weeks and months when they get to be the first to play with the latest and greatest. Today I’m mostly cured, which is why I have held off upgrading to a high-definition projector for more than a year, and counting. Still, Christmas is coming.

I know I’m not the only one out there with EarlyAdopteritis so feel free to fill me in on the pleasure and pain that comes with having to be the first in line. µ