The area I would go for is lighting, upgrade to LED lights they are more expensive but they last for ages and have a very small power bill. I have heard of lighting a whole house with 250 Watts, which is a ridiculously small amount of power, my laptop uses more power than that.
Aside from that if you don't already have a media server at home then get a Sheeva plugin computer, or 2, and a hefty hard drive to act as you media server and anything else you can think of. It only costs a hundred bucks, make sure you read about the power supply issues. I eventually used an external power supply for mine. Again the main reason for this is that size of the power draw, I doubt my Sheeva uses more than 10 Watts at any time other than booting it serves files, does a bit of home web hosting for me and I use Mediatomb to stream my videos to the PS3 ( also works with XBox boxes I am led to believe).
My only issue is that I cannot get files from my server to my iPad, which still burns me up about Apple and the iPad (GRRRRRRRRR!).

http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/1seaofpis.png
gosh this looks like a lot of Raspberry Pi's in shrink wrap, I wonder if maybe you got modded out for some reason other than you make sane reasonable points with evidence in a calm and reasonable manner?

you are right about point 1 I should have said "to the state of functionality that is present today" instead of "right".
Yes keyboards are a great deal more expressive than mice, but at the same point they also take a great deal longer to learn. My daughter could use a mouse from to click on stuff age 4 (only using one of the buttons cause the other one didn't do much to her eyes) I am not saying that she could do everything with the mouse but her grasp of where the mouse was and how it moved compared to her hand was one that was learned very quickly. So now she is 7 and has just really started using the keyboard and I guess she will not be completely comfortable with it for another year or so and with complete mastery some way off in the distant future.
The main point is, do we want to tied to a desk, or workstation or office or room or do we want more mobile computer and possibly even one that will disappear altogether. If we want all that then I am not sure how often we will be using a keyboard, but I've been wrong before I did buy shares in a bank.
I'd also better stop before I start sounding like a futurist.

A bit like the first time I was present when somebody using hands free headset for their mobile phone, I answered 3 of his questions before I realised he was't talking to me. I am pretty sure he thought I was deranged as he left fairly quickly.

True, but a few points.
1. how long did it take to get the Desktop right? If you think about how long we didn't even have mice to interact with the computer and you don't have to move hardly at all if you don't use one of those.
2.We need to start some place with this and 3D displays and how to interact with them have been around for a while but they will only be improved on when try to figure out how we work with them. This may not be as quick or intuitive as a mouse, but if people don't do work like this then we will be stuck with mice, track-pads and touch screens and the like. for ever.
3.If it could be linked to glasses/contact lenses instead of a screen then I think it would make a lot more sense.

If only I still had moderator points I would mod this up.
Speaking from the point of view of having a spouse with a chronic degenerative medical condition, I feel the situations are analogous. We would love to be able to afford the medication that may help her but they have to be able to make their "reasonable" returns on their investments.
I could really start a huge rant here but I will keep my powder dry as it is a bit off topic.

I find it odd that Doctors, Nurses and Mental Health workers are supposed to be in the healing profession because it is a "calling" whereas drug companies are all cold hard profit and no-one seems to find it an outrageous double standard.

Thank you

Sorry I've been away,
have a read at this part of the thread, I think that it supports my argument of hyperbole and FUD quite nicely.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2732783&cid=39400829
or do you want some other data, something of the gaps perhaps?

No my argument is that if even with the increase in tax on these investments that the returns that they are getting still make it worthwhile, therefore they will still invest.

The point I also made, I think, was that the article was hyperbole, that it was purposefully alarmist to try to influence the Indian government to try to stop the change in law. I still don't see anything that you say that will dissuade me of that belief.

The point that money should be given to the poor is more in general terms, with your example of the investor, I assume that the government would not just hand out cash in bags with no record as to where it went or what is being done with it and that there would be some accounting, I assume this because no sane person would fly in Billions of dollars to a place and not know where it went. I thought you might do me the same courtesy and assume that I might have a better plan then just handing out money willy nilly, but I guess I was wrong.
I may believe in tax in the rich but I also believe that people should work for money if they can do so. But I also think that the mark of a society is not how prosperous it is but how it cares for it's poor, dispossessed and it's sick
I think that may be enough for now.
Oh and Robert J Barro has opinions on many things that I find quite odious, but that is the problem with economics it's so damned fickle to the fates of fashion. What is wrong with a good bit of Keynesian economics

Rather than give the money away to investors who will try to make money for themselves, I would propose several a large infrastructure projects. This would improve the lot of everyone, not just the investor. Roads, railways, bridges, tunnels, dams, reservoirs, schools, universities heck even nuclear power stations. These are the things that need to be created in many cases. These types of projects are arguably on of the most influential mechanisms that pulled the US out of the great depression by it's bootstraps and ushered in one of the greatest eras of development and technological advances that the world has ever seen all built on the backbone of infrastructure that is now crumbling and decrepit through neglect.

But NOT a monorail!

And that doesn't refute my argument one iota. You are just trying to sum up my argument in puerile and facile way to belittle the ramifications of it. I agree Bush tax cuts have little to do with the situation in India but I hold them as an example of how not to tune your tax system. Remember that taxation or the Rich under Bush fell to it's lowest since before the great depression, increasingly the tax burden was shifted from those most able to pay to those least able to pay and the results have been pretty much the same. I notice that you say that you are non-rich, but it gave the very rich even more. What did you do with yours? invest it in a start up? or spend it on stuff you needed?

Read this comment, it's not mine but should be modded up
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2732783&cid=39400829
As I have said it is hyperbole, it is not real, it is a fiction to say that the investment will be taxed at 30% and you are falling for it.