This.

Cost calculations must factor in time spent watching and/or forwarding through ads amongst other things. There is other time as well, including dealing with said cable company, paying said bills etc. etc. I'm not even arguing that it sways the calculation one way or another, but it must be considered.

I feel like the broken record of my circle of friends but time must be valued at an exceptionally high rate. It is our most limited resource and, if my own calculations are correct, the more of that time is spent simply watching tv, the more limited the resource itself becomes.

I just posted this an hour ago: http://www.youtube.com/user/41D57#p/a/u/0/c5cF8Us4cK4

While the video pokes fun at size and boot time, for the average desktop user, those things remain largely the same.

We use these: http://www.wiebetech.com/products/cases.php

It's like having a proper hard-case for each disk, and although it won't protect them from a fall it makes it easy to line them all up on a bookshelf or in a rack/drawer system and pull them out when needed.

We also read each drive at least once every 6 months to ensure the drive can re-new any weak magnetic sectors/blocks.