Money well spent

Khannie

So what techie gear have you bought then afterwards thought "Damn...that was money well spent" ?

For me, in recent years these are the stand out purchases:

Optoma HD65 projector - £514 delivered in August 2009. 720p DLP projector. Amazing purchase. Super picture about 2 metres diagonal in size (maybe more, I'm just too lazy to measure). Had to RMA it at one point and Optoma were amazing. Possibly my best techie purchase ever. Every time I see some high def goodness on it I'm still impressed. I'll upgrade to 1080p at some point, but I'm not in any mad rush.

Orange San Francisco / ZTE Blade phone. 130 euro for a decent spec'd, unlockable smartphone. I own it. No contracts, no hassle. Really good phone. Only fault is the camera's not so great.

Wireless N usb dongle - 7.50 delivered. Works a treat. Very nice upgrade for the laptop for what amounts to pocket change.

What about you?

Robdude

I can't remember the brand - but my first Solid State Harddrive was an amazing improvement. I think I paid ~75 euro (100 USD at the time).

Tea_Bag

id second that SSD comment.

i nabbed my intel x25m G2 80gb off adverts for €115 still sealed in its box a good long time ago. every single time I do any rebooting etc on the PC it just flies. i kinda forget how pain free it is until i use someones PC/laptop that doesnt have one. i can cold boot into Word etc and shut down before a "normal" PC can boot. of course having an EUFI BIOS helps too Im extremely broke at the moment, but if my SSD died id still look for a way to get a replacement the same day.

Another thing is my DesireHD (insert any android large screen phone here though) what a brilliant peice of technology. My PC has become redundant for anything but gaming and lab reports now. even then im interested in getting a bluetooth keyboard and use the phone more often. so much power in your pocket. just got a new ROM on it and an OC to 1.8Ghz to give it a little more life ha ha

Gadgetman496

Bought loads of these and have never had any issues with them.
Excellent consistent signal across all OS's. Highly recommend.

Mini WIFI Wireless N 150Mbps (802.11n) Mini USB 2.0 Adapter / Dongle - White

Khannie

Yeah, the ol' SSD is definitely money well spent alright. I have a crappy laptop at home (like 5 years old) with one in it and it still flies along.

the_syco

Comos 1000 case. I think somewhere between €100 and €200. It came with fans installed, and is fairly quite (esp compared with all of my previous cases). Great when watching movies, or trying to hear the enemy walking in FPS games.

L'prof

My router packed it in recently, so I picked this up for €75. Works really well and I can plug an external into it (very handy for media).

I was getting fed up of buffering issues when streaming big files to my PS3, so I bought an Apple TV for €109. Since installing XBMC on it, I genuinely have never been happier with my media setup and I never have to mess around with the laptop any more or have the fan whirring in my ear!

yoyo

Razer Diamondback 3G mouse. I don't know how many crappy wired/wireless mice I went through before this one. I paid the large sum of €68 or so for it a few years ago, its still going strong. Someone (not me) spilled vodka and coke on it :eek: and the scroll wheel stopped working and suddenly came back to life the next day.
I learned with mice you get what you pay for, someone gave me a free Dell wired keyboard and would never go cheap mice/wireless crap again!

Nick

Khannie

Oh! I just remembered (I'm surprised I forgot). I got a friend to pick me up a Nook. Super piece of kit. Only €80.