#7-Technology

I read a number of the different participants bogs aobut thing #7 and technology. Most were talking about things liek digital cameras and facebopok and things like that. My choice uis much more mundane but has been a valuable asset. I live with my parents and in 2005, I got a new Dodge Grand Caravan and gave my parents my 2000 Caravan. Last week the air conditioning wasn't working right and after taking it to be looked at it was going to be at least $2800 to fix. So DAd started talking about new vehicle. This is not the time in my life to get a new vehicle but he had had good success with a used one a number of years ago. I had heard people touting CAR Max so I went to their website and showed Dad how to access it and retrieve info (my Dad does okay on word processing and can do some Internet but usually I initiate it for him). He found a few cars he was interested in and I found a few more. So last night we went to Car Max in Rockville and after doing a walk around eliminated everything but another Dodge Grand Caravan. So then we talked to a sales representative. And an hour later we have a car being transferred to here from Virginia to look at that has been visually inspected for us (done in 1/2 hour), had our 2000 van roadtested and a trade in value given, and we are pretty well set to buy another vehicle all through the auspices of the Internet. To be able to look at a few writeups and say yea or nay and then to use the Internet to refine our search to the specifications we really wanted like power doors and quad seats and etc was fantastic. Having gone for several days a couple of weeks ago with no air conditioning in my van due to a bad fan, I know Dad didn't want to go to long without the air conditioning. So now if financing it was just faster, and quicker, and easier and yet it involves technology also cause we have to apply online for the loans (Dad and I are splitting the cost of the new vehicle).