THEY drop the price, and so yes I did miss out :(, a backup 10gb or 20gb would've been nice...

60GB players are better deal, anyway, and I think a few are still left in international store...

Yea would be nice, but after this christmas, my budget allows me only a 10GB model :(

unless the kind empeg guys wanna, swap out the 60GB HDD with a 10GB one :)

cheers,
Jaidev

What's funny is that if you buy two 30Gb IBM hdds you spend more than if you buy a 60Gb empeg! :) I am considering to buy a 60Gb empeg, but the fact that I just upgraded mine to 42 by addding a 30Gb makes that decision hard to be taken... It's cheap, but still we're talking about $500 for something I already own... Mmmm....

What's funny is that if you buy two 30Gb IBM hdds you spend more than if you buy a 60Gb empeg! :) I

Exactly. That helped me rationalize buying a 60GB unit (and spending some not exactly surplus $650 on it - 10% customs duty, 22% VAT) - it's an upgrade, not spare .

Plus I would get a mk2a with slightly more ram memory, a new plastic fascia, and one year extra guarantee... Oh man, I am afraid I am about to do it... What a terrible situation...

My thoughts exactly!

Stop, please!
I had just decided that NO, i would NOT spend that money on a second empeg, but on something else, and now I am undecided once again! . I'm a technology victim, that's what I am! And I am not alone...

[little voice inside your head]
Come on, be bad...you know it'll feel sooooo good!

Perhaps if you buy a 60GB unit now, and sell your old one in a month or two, when the second-hand prices rise again...

BTW, I almost bought myself a 30GB TravelStar for Xmas. Phew!

You almost did? I DID, what the heck! And you know something?
---------->>>> I got the new 60Gb empg all the same !!! <<<<----------
I can't believe to what I just did. I just can't!

I have a bouch of friends that are gonna think I'm 1) crazy, 2) billionaire. And that are going to fight to get my 12Gb empeg

I have a bouch of friends that are gonna think I'm 1) crazy, 2) billionaire.

Congratulations!

My friends know I am not 2, therefore I must be 1.

BTW, was that lira billionaire, or euro billionaire? Sigh, I will miss all those colourfull European banknotes and fancy coins... In the last ten or so years they all tended to be of quite similar design, but remember those Italian lira and French franc notes the size of a smallish newspaper? Francs were usually held together with pins.

What is important, though, is that wine and food stay diverse. No danger there (unless some eurobureaucrat endeavors to standadise those, too ).

Well, unfortunately I am neither of them, however billions of Lire would be totally fine for me, after all
I guess it is going to be a bit messy here in the old continent, for a while. Still, for those like me who are also used to think in dollar terms it is not going to be THAT bad. What I am gonna do for sure is to go to the round the corner bancomat on Jan 1st and see if they give me Euros already... But I am afraid there's gonna be a line of stupidly curios people just like me .
Thinking of the size, Italian Lire come in quite small banknotes, smaller than Euro banknotes, actually. I'll have to buy a new wallet! See, these small changes are what I actually dislike about the new currency, as well as the fact that, compared to Lire, Euros will be slightly more... "coin-oriented", forcing ppl to carry more coins with them, which I simply hate and always tended to avoid. I guess most people will use bancomat whenever they can...

Well, I had no problems converting from liras to euros a few weeks ago when I visited Rome: drop three zeroes and divide by two. Actually, it was easy because German mark is almost second national currency here (Croatia), and it has nice round 1:1000 rate towards lira and 2:1 towards euro.

Shortage of actual euro banknotes was very acute these last few months when our people brought several hunderd million DEM which they kept in proverbial old socks and under mattresses to banks for zero-fee conversion. Most were not very happy about having to leave their new euros on their accounts (or convert them, after paying fee, to dollars, pounds, Swiss francs...). Needless to say, banks are happy.

I actually prefer coins to notes, up to, say, $10 value. They somehow feel more substantial, you can leave them on the counter, newspaper stand or café table without weighting them down againt breeze and they sound better...

Those enormous lira notes are some 30-40 or so years old (probably this generation); even I barely remember them.

Wow, I once saw one of those, my Grandmother used to keep them! :D
However, that's a pretty nice and interesting site! Thanks!
Anyway yes, it's not too hard to go from Lire to Euros and vice versa, still I am pretty sure a lot of ppl will get confused for a while...
Oh, and just as a side note, today I went to recharge my gf's cell phone at a bancomat stand, and the only currency used was Euro! :) I can say this is the first time I actually use it, so... Well... Nice!

Ok, tonight I went to the Cinema, stopped by a bancomat to get some money and now I am the happy holder of 6 nice pink/redish 10Euro banknotes, way to new and clean and shiny to be real... Well, wow, so that was all true, the Euro times have started! Feels so strange, I feel like I am holding soome Monopoly banknotes, they don't look real
Also, even before that, I was pulling out of the highway and stopped to pay the toll, and the guy asked for 40 cents. "Sorry?" I replied. What the heck was he talking about? 40 what? Than I realized and gave him 700 lire... I had not been to the bancomat yet, no euros on me... Well, times change...

Happy New Year to Everybody!

What is the new breakdown of units in the European monetary system? (Besides the Euro of course). Are fractions of a Euro "cents"? Not only divisible into 100 sub-euro units, but actually called "cents" too? Also, what are the common (standard) coin and note denominations?

Bruno

Coins:
-------
1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 Cents. They are called EuroCents, officially. Now, remember that they are spelled the same everywhere in Eu, but pronounced differently, according to the language spoken in each country (in Italy, for example, they are pronounced "Chents" or, using the Italian full word "Centesimi")

1, 2 Euro

Banknotes:
-------------
10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 Euro



12 Countries adopted Euro, that is all EU members Except UK, Denmark, and Sweden, if I am not mistaken.