Trade in — Blog — Healy Chen

Thanks but no thanks

A few days ago, I received an email from BMW of San Francisco - the dealership where I purchased my BMW M2 Competition from. The email states they’ve got an exciting offer for me! How would I like to trade in that BMW M2 Competition for, wait for it, a brand-new BMW M240i X-Drive! Why yes, I would totally love to trade in a genuine BMW M-division product for a plain, off the general assembly line car (this is sarcasm, for you non car guys).

At least have the decency to offer me the new BMW M2! My brother recently saw one of those on the street, so I know production has begun. Unlike my M2, this new one doesn’t have to make the ocean journey from Germany. The new M2 is manufactured down south in Mexico. Quite a bit easier for units to reach American dealerships. I’m actually intrigued to see one in person. BMW of SF should have offered!

Honestly though, I have no intention of switching out of the M2 for another new BMW. The current M product lineup have polarizing styling and interiors dominated by screens. (As is the current trend in automotive interiors. Thanks, Tesla!) Sure the new cars are faster, but that’s not something worth chasing. The 405 horsepower of my 2021 M2 is just fine. You really don’t need more than that for public roads.

What I cannot tolerate is the automotive industry moving towards LCD displays to replace everything inside the car. Like a crazed gun-nut, I’m clinging on to physical buttons and needle instrument dials - both of which my M2 has - until you pry it out of my dead hands. I don’t want to go through multiple menus just to adjust a seat angle!

Always good to see one of these completely stock, unmolested.

Trading it in

In the quest to consolidate and simplify my life, in preparation for the time when COVID is over and we all go back to what once was normal (as of this writing, hopefully early next year?), I am selling my barely a year old 15-inch Macbook Pro. The laptop was bought as a bandaid option during a difficult time last year - when my main computer the iMac was unceremoniously taken away from me - and as specified it doesn’t fit what I need going forward. While indeed I am taking a rather huge chunk of loss in depreciation, sometimes in life you have to spend the money to get what you want.

I am stingy 95% of the time so I can afford to spend somewhat frivolously during the small 5%. Exhibit A: the GT3.

Anyways, the 2019 version of the 15-inch Macbook Pro is a fantastic machine, but the reason I am trading it in (for cash to be used on a future Macbook Pro) is because the particular unit I bought is lacking in storage space and memory. Apple’s largest laptop is appropriately expensive, and speccing for larger SSD drives and extra RAM increases the price rather dramatically. It was an emergency situation at the time of purchase of my 15-inch unit, so I didn’t have the foresight (or money, honestly) to spec the machine the way I would have liked. “Poverty spec” - the absolute base model - was what I ended up purchasing.

Armed with only a 256 GB SSD drive, space becomes precious really quickly, especially dealing with 100 MB RAW files from the Sony A7R2 and 4K footage from the GoPro. I am not able to fit my music collection onto the main drive itself, because it would take up half the room. To listen to music I had to plug in an external drive, which is slightly burdensome and a hassle if I wanted to move the Macbook somewhere off the desk. The goal with whatever Macbook Pro I buy in the future is to opt for enough hard-drive space that I can fit the entirety of my digital life onto the laptop and still have vast amount of space in reserves for my photography and video projects. I want to be able to just grab that one computer and take everything with me wherever.

One laptop to hold them all. Tolkien would be proud, I’m sure.