'Tis the Season To Be Thrifty

We've always had the alternative of not compulsively buying the newest and shiniest gadget. As we approach the gift-giving season, more people are opting not to buy the latest gadgets. Slate's Farhad Manjoo examines Last Year's Model, a growing movement to stave off gadget ADD and stick it out with, well, last year's model:

Earlier this year, when the blogger and tech entrepreneur Anil Dash traveled to India to visit his family, he was struck by his uncle's choice of gadgetry. "We were standing in the middle of a rice paddy in one of the poorest regions of India," Dash says, "and I saw he was using a pretty recent Nokia Smartphone." It was the same phone that Dash himself had been using a couple years before—but Dash had gone through three different phones since then.

Click here to learn more about Last Year's Model and see which 2009 models are still gift worthy.