I bought new glasses today and it took me way too long to decide. There are a bunch that look just about the same but for some minor details and the way they fit. I would try them one and could find pros and cons for each pair so there was no clear winner. So after far too long I just said the heck with it and picked one.

Maybe I should have kept looking until I found one that was a clear winner ?

On a side note has anyone tried one of the online places like zennioptical.com ? Now that I have my new prescription I am going to order a cheap pair from them just to try it.

Much like a choice in computers systems or OS, glasses define who you are. You definitely did well by taking your time.

I've been shopping around for surgery lately. My glasses are now 10 yeas old, but the frames still look fairly current. They're a bit worn and I should have probably picked up a new pair along with new lenses a while back. Now I'm just sick of wearing glasses and contacts, so I'm looking at possibly getting Intacs.

I mostly decided to get new ones due to having extra money in the flex spending account to use before the end of the year.

I thought about Lasik but still to chicken :)Not so much afraid of going blind or a disaster but of paying for the procedure then still needing glasses because they didn't make me 20/20.

I don't know how it works in the US, but here I get fed up with this: "It's just as cheap to have new glasses", every time your prescription changes and all those "At the moment, we've got an offer on", when I'm quite happy with my frames, and new ones might not be as comfortable. And no I don't want a half price 2nd. set, I haven't got four eyes (despite the expression). The look of disappointment on the sales girls face when I came out this time with an unchanged prescription summed it up.

The last time I bought glasses it cost me over $400 for the pair, with most of the cost coming from the frame.

Entirely my point, how can it possibly be that to replace two pieces of glass can be as cheap as replacing the whole thing?... And don't start me on designer frames: If Alfred Dunhill, Pierre Cardin, or their successors, want to come round to my place and design a pair of glasses as sympathetic to my size and appearance as, say, a Savile Row suit, then those would be designer glasses!!!

Agreed - the only times I changed my frames was when I got a motorbike helmet that was quite snug - got some Oakleys as they had straight legs. Other than that I am more than happy to argue the case for grinding down new bits of glass and popping them in the same frames.

I actually think the lenses are the rip off now.

There are quite a few frames for about 100.00 but the lenses can cost over 300 for single vision.

The place I got the exam at wanted 175.00 1.67 high index single vision but then they want you get get anti-reflective coating and charge 100.00 for that. A hundred dollars for a coating sounds insane.

I bought the glasses from Walmart because they are quite a bit cheaper and usually I get them from Pearle and the like so i'm sure Walmart is as good as them. Walmart wanted 95.00 for the frames and 150 for the high index lenses with anti-reflective coating.

Zennioptical gets 40 dollars for the same lenses with the same coating. These things must have a huge markup for the price to be able to vary that much.

I ordered a really cheap pair with cheap lenses from Zenni (10 bucks total) because I am really curious about if they are any good.

I'm considering getting my eyes lasered, rather than buy any more pairs of glasses.

I've thought about that but decided it is just too late and just too risky. I'm 40 in January and I already have to take my glasses off to read small text*, so if I had my eyes lasered I'd no doubt have to start using reading glasses pretty quickly.

I'm also not convinced that the problem with halos at night effects as few people as the companies who do lasering claim. I suspect that some people just aren't that picky about visual quality as others. I think I'm at the picky end of the spectrum (for example I often used to be the one person in the room driven mad by low refresh rate monitor flicker before the blessed relief of the arrival of LCD screens).

Also my prescription is fairly low (~-1.5 IIRC), which probably makes it less compelling than someone who needs glasses to find the bathroom in the morning



* I'm not looking forward to the point where I need reading glasses just to read my iPhone like Eryl now does

At 25 years your senior next month, I can tell you that the bathroom isn't a problem: For nearly 50 years now I've had palpitations and become disorientated if I get more than a step or two away from a bar.
Maybe we should make our fortune with an iphone eye prescription app.!

My prescription is only -1.25, but it's in only one eye. And wearing a single contact lens is incredibly annoying. Was thinking of either getting my eyes lasered or getting prescription Oakleys (sunglasses and goggles) for snowboarding.

Day-to-day, I don't wear glasses or lenses, but I need them for driving and for boarding.

You'd cut a dash with a monocle!
Having had a cataract operation, I would think any eye surgery under local anaesthetic would be unpleasant: The funny thing is, and the surgeon told me this, after the operation, not only is everything in sharp focus, but the colours appear brilliant.

You should try coping with a prescription that effectively changes through the day

Last Christmas I developed a Holmes-Adie pupil. My right pupil now has a mind if its own.

Most of the time it stays moderately dilated. This is a pain in bright sun, because it doesn't constrict quickly to adapt to the bright light. It will sometimes constrict a bit after being in bright light for a long time, but usually just as I'm going back indoors...

It also don't dilate beyond a certain point. So my night vision in my right eye isn't as good as my left (which gives a very odd feel in a darkened room).

It also has an odd behaviour late at night or sometimes after spending a long time in a night contrast environment (like looking at a bright computer screen, phone or iPad for some hours). It will suddenly constrict as if I am in bright sunlight and stay constricted for a long time.

Because the amount of dilation of the pupil is effectively the aperture of the lens, my prescription effectively changes during the day. Also, it doesn't seem to be just the depth of field that changes, which is what I would expect. When my right eye is doing its "clamp down tight" thing late at night, all of a sudden my right eye can focus on the TV unaided nearly as well as my left eye can with my glasses on.

All a bit of a pain in the arse, just hoping that the left eye doesn't follow, as it tends to do in 20% of cases

Using my SLR with my right eye doesn't work so well any more. Also in bright sunlight it isn't just that my right eye is dazzled. It actually effects the white balance as well, so I end up with one eye seemingly with a yellow hue and the other with a green hue. All very odd.