14+ Money Saving Tips for Computer Geeks

“14+ money saving computer user ideas” has some useful advice for saving money on technology. I am proud to say that I have recently done a few of things on the list, including 1) ditching our local phone line (although we got cell phones rather than VOIP) and 4) building a MythTV box. I was most impressed by how I resisted buying new hardware for my MythTV box as well. I was originally going to buy a new 250GB hard drive so I would have 120 hours of recording time. Instead I opted to stick with an old 10GB hard drive with only 6-7GB free (so 3 hours of recording time). Somehow I resisted spending that extra money on a bigger hard drive. Initially I thought that my MythTV box hadn’t saved me any money as the TV tuner card I bought cost $175. But when our main DVD player had to be given back to a friend I realized that the MythTV box could be used as a DVD player as well, rather than buying a brand new system. I hooked up a DVD-ROM drive I had laying around and so that saved some money. I also recently 11) bought an eBook rather than print. I paid about half the price (when you include shipping for the book) and only printed the chapters I needed using a laser printer fueled by dirt cheap toner refills from eBay. One thing I have not done is backed up my data recently! As mentioned in 14), you never know when something might happen.