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Originally Posted by M.N. Dalvez
Good advice, but I want to add something about Skype. You can't call anything that's not a land-line or a mobile number with it. That means:
- no calling the water/gas/electric etc. company with it.
- no calling for a taxi
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Um...that's not true in the US. I've called all utilities with it, and recently. Taxi is just another local number.
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and most importantly ...
- NO CALLING EMERGENCY SERVICES.
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This may be true, but...so what. Call the regular local police number. In a small town, there's no difference here.
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It's a great, brilliant service. But it still pays to also have a mobile phone with a few bucks of credit in it - just exercise some fucking restraint (this is a general comment, not aimed at anyone) with it and stick to pre-paid credit, and your bill won't be beyond your means.
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The point is to avoid OVERHEAD. Skype is 99% free, and pay as you go for the calls to landlines and cell phones. I put in ten dollars' credit years ago...I still have a few bucks left. The other option was spending minimum 15/20 a month for landline. Why? No reason.
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But for most of them, that number is so high that turning the computer on and off all the time won't affect the hard disk's lifespan in any substantial sense.
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Who said all the time? Turn it off when you sleep. Eight hours of 50 watts for cable modem plus whatever your monitor and tower are is not nothing. It's not much, but it's not nothing.