In principle I agree. In practice I know I've gained far more happiness from the integratedness of the amazon store, the size of their selection, and the free international internet (it's on one particular model, the kindle keyboard, which you can only buy in the US, but it still exists AFAIK) than I ever would have from running an SSH app or developing my own apps. The refresh rate makes these devices really very limited for general-purpose computing. My advice is to buy a good, open phone, and treat the e-reader as a single-purpose appliance.
What can I purchase with $100 that will be the best thing I can buy to make my life better?
I've decided to budget some regular money to improving my life each month. I'd like to start with low hanging fruit for obvious reasons - but when I sat down to think of improvements, I found myself thinking of the same old things I'd already been planning to do anyway... and I'd like out of that rut.
Constraints/more info:
Background:
This is a question I recently posed to my local Less Wrong group and we came up with a few good ideas, so I thought I'd share the discussion with the wider community and see what we can come up with. I'll add the list we came up with later on in the comments...
It'd be great to have a repository of low-hanging fruit for things that can be solved with (relatively affordable) amounts of money. I'd personally like to go through the list - look at candidates that sound like they'd be really useful to me and then make a prioritised list of what to work on first.