What’s Your Gear Investment?

Geeks love new gear. Mostly we talk about new notebooks, netbooks, phones, Tablets, yada, yada, yada; and everyone loves when a new package is headed for delivery. But what about the gear that supports our geeky habits. I’m talking about the investment we make in things like external drives for backup (you do backup don’t you?), docking equipment, extra batteries, battery chargers, scanners, USB Hubs, cables, screen protectors, bags, screen cleaning solutions, etc… You know the stuff that we rarely think about when we are trying to squeeze out those few extra dollars to make a big purchase. We know sooner or later we’ll need to spend the dough, or we hope what we have will work with what’s new. At least for awhile. I know I can always find ways to rationalize new gear purchases. I pick up new external hard drives at least once a year and rotate them as a part of my backup strategy.

So, let’s break this down into percentages. If your devices are a 100% cost, what percentage of that figure do you spend on an annual basis supporting your use of those devices. At any one time I’m running about $3500 worth of devices (based on what I paid for them not their current or depreciated value.) When I total up all the gear that I use to support that, my calculations come to about 18% of the total, or roughly $630 a year on average. Obviously some years I spend more than others, but I’d say that’s a good average.

How about you?