Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Personal Finances and Consumer Concerns, essays, stories, examples and how to articles with a distinctly Canadian Point of View

Archive for January 24th, 2006

Investment: High Tech

Tuesday, January 24th, 2006

Ha ha, fooled you guys, you know I don’t like giving out “hot stock tips” or investment tips, because, I am pretty clueless when it comes to that kind of stuff (but I do read a lot of good folks, who do seem to have a much better grasp on things, and you could read the Carnival of Investing if you are really gung ho to get ahead).

Nope, about 3 weeks ago I plunked down about $90 Canadian (all inclusive) and got a DVD 8x burner and 50 blank DVDs, and let me tell you I have already got my money out of this little investment:

  1. I can now back up my MP3 collection (very important) (approx value to me $20)
  2. I have backed up my work computer at home (so I am not relying on my company’s I.T. organization to back my system up) (approx valued $30, because I lost my C: partition a while ago and am STILL fixing the darn machine).
  3. My kids can watch DVDs on their computer and I don’t have to listen to them argue over TV time (approx value $10, at least!)
  4. Translating Hi-8 videos from my Camcorder to DVDs, which will last a little longer than the tapes will (but not forever, be warned, Burnable DVDs will wear out eventually too). (approx value $50). Try to get this done by one of those services, and see how much that costs!

I installed it myself, so I saved about $50 in service charges, and it came with a free copy of Nero Burning software (a stripped down version but it gets the job done).

I agonized over buying this, but I think it was a worthwhile investment for me.

Remember to read the Festival of Frugality this week hosted by our friends at the Canadian Capitalist.

–C8j

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