Car shopping

For me, car shopping requires a lot of data. How big are they, how much do they cost, what fuel consumption are we looking at?

With my car donated and our other car on it's last go-round at 202 thousand miles, we are shopping. Here is data I collected from edmunds and cars.com on the our top choices.


Capacity (all seat 5):
Car     L    W    IntVol  CargoVol (cubic fee)
-----  ---  ---   -----    ------
V70    186   71    135      33.3
CR-V   179   72    103      37.2
Golf   165   70    105      12.2
Jetta  179   70    125      32.8


MPG/Power/Range
Car      Year  City  Hwy  HP/TQ    Range
-------  ----  ----  ---  -------  ------
v70       01    17   24   168/170  400/527
CR-V 2wd  12    23   31   185/163  351/470
CR-V 4wd  12    22   30   185/163  336/459
Golf      11    30   42   140/236  435/609 (same for '12 and '10)
Jetta     11    29   39   140/236  420/565 (same for '12)

Prices (current advertised prices on cars.com)
           year/miles/price (miles and price in thousands)
v70        04/80/11, 06/54/17, 08/44/20, 10/54/24
CR-V 2wd   07/46/16, 09/57/17, 10/44/21, 11/17/22, 12/13/21
CR-V 4wd   04/56/15, 07/40/22, 10/24/26, 11/20/21, 
Golf       11/5 /20, 11/41/23, 12/14/25, 13/7 /24
Jetta      10/25/24, 12/--/25, 13/12/28

After driving all but the CR-V and based on the data I offer: 

The 2 wheel drive CR-V gets very good gas mileage and has more cargo room than our current car. And it is 7 inches shorter! It is also more reliable than VW. However, VW gets better gas mileage by far. These also have near-luxury interiors and much better handling than the CR-V. The jetta is more car than the golf, but is also more expensive. A newer v70 is also an option as there are some to be had with "low" miles at good prices.

Time to make a choice...

tech shopping fix

I've been itching to get an iPhone and a Mac for some time now. We got carpets and new kitchen flooring instead... My tech shopping fix is not happening.

But a visit to my mom's house in VT provide a rare opportunity....

Picture this, I show up at mom's and instead of a tech free week I'm handed a delicious box of...DSL equipment. That's right, mom is finally exiting the dark ages and getting "high speed" internet in the form of 768 DSL. Way to go mom!

So up to the computer room I go. Horrors, she still has the 15" monitor at 1024x768. I set up the DSL, and in the process reject all the crap-ware the DSL provider offers to install. It is distressing that the screens suggesting what to install don't say anything about what is needed or not for the DSL to work. Of course, not one bit of the free "Software" is needed. I assume most users would have installed it all - not knowing the difference. That aside, the DSL worked great. I was somewhat perplexed that they sent her phone filters, but the phones worked fine with or without them. I didn't do any experimenting on this front though.

Next day she is taking pictures and squinting at her digicam's 1.5 inch screen. I show her mine which has a 3" screen. She is surprised to learn this camera cost me $180 bucks... I also tell her she can get a new LCD for the computer for about the same price.

Now the final straw - she has cordless phones that only run a few minutes before cutting out randomly. Not a battery problem - something stranger.

That was it, we were off to Circuit City. New 22" monitor, new PowerShot SD750, and new cordless phones - $500 bucks. She also got a small camera bag and 2gig SD memory card.

Mom gets new stuff - I get a much needed tech shopping fix!