I will confess to having bought and enjoyed two Android tablets. Three if you count the one that stopped working. I still have the older one with versions of artistic apps that weren't improved with upgrades.

I also have a budget Android smartphone.

The thread for both of these choices is that my needs and expectations are low. These do the job for me and let me use my moderate income on food and art classes.

I do own an old Macbook Pro that still works, if slowly, but not for Internet. I got it with an education discount at an old job; and a Mac Air that's long in the tooth but also still working, that I got on sale as the newer model had just come out.

I guess my philosophy has been to have modest expectations and needs rather than cultivate expensive tastes. I feel like once you do, then you are going to be disappointed a lot as you get older and retire and your income drops.

I also refuse to buy books for $30 a pop when there's an awesome public library 3 blocks away.

I guess you can take the blue-collar girl out of blue collar jobs but you can't completely erase the frugal values she grew up with.