Hope I don’t lose my geek badge but instead of buying one of many available copies of Leopard floating around the area tonight at 6pm PST, I went with the last copy — the store actually held it for us — of Sony’s intriguing PS3 Eye of Judgment game.

It comes with the new Playstation Eye camera and there is a free download in the Playstation store. It’s the card + computer game that was a hit at the Penny Arcade Expo here in Seattle recently.

Why didn’t I buy Leopard too?
Two reasons:

1. I need to upgrade my eMac memory. Why didn’t I do that sooner? I know, I know, slacker! Leopard requires 512MB RAM minimum and I’m still running in the dark ages (but happily, I might add with the apps I use) with the 256MB RAM that came with the machine in 2004.

According to Crucial 512MB will only cost me $32.99. $66 to upgrade to 1GB? Think I might go all the way. Who knows, maybe I’ll emulate Marc Orchant and spring for the new iMac instead. I’ve had my eyes on the Intel Macs for awhile to replace or supplement my eMac. Honestly, the eMac has served me very well the last three years for how it’s been used and still works fine.

2. There will be plenty of time to buy Leopard over the next week and it will take me at least a few days after buying to review it in detail. I kind of like the idea of reviewing installing Leopard on an older machine as I’m guessing there won’t be as many of those reviews. This timing still puts me behind the cutting edge Mac fans, but I can live with that. We didn’t buy Vista the day it came out either (but a couple days later bought this machine with Vista on it). And it wasn’t until the last week that I regularly started using Vista.

The existing Leopard reviews like Walt Mossberg saying it’s “evolutionary, not revolutionary” and the 300+ features have solidified me as a buyer, but even if the two lame excuses above weren’t there, I didn’t feel the absolute, craving need to buy it when I was at the store tonight. Thought I would be sweaty palmed and reaching for my wallet at the store but it just didn’t happen. I did, however, get that feeling with Eye of Judgment (and yes my spelling is correct, there is no ‘e’ in the game title).

Was disappointed that I couldn’t play around with the Leopard demo in store for a bit tonight. About 50 minutes after the official launch the Tacoma Best Buy was still loading Leopard on their machines (huh?!). I wonder if we’ll see some customers moaning about long install/upgrade times?

Anyway, more details on Eye of Judgment and the Playstation Eye camera will be coming soon. If you have a copy of Judgment, holler in the comments and maybe we can play a game together over the PS3 network.

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