Not a purchase per-se, but Linux - investing time in learning it has paid for itself hundreds of times over. A MacBook Air with apple silicon - it hurts to use anything else. ESP8266s / ESP32s with ESPHome - being able to craft real world solutions with very limited electronics skills is amazing.

Which printer did you buy?

MiniDisc as a format seemed to make huge sense at the time - mp3’s were a thing, but writable CDs were clunky and iPods hadn’t arrived yet. But yes - it was unusable - literally - I don’t remember actually being able to listen to anything I really wanted to listen to on it.

Your mention of NetMD awoke memories of absolute rage for me! Just trying to install it was flakey. Then trying to get MP3’s onto disc - it was never clear where the bugs stopped and where the DRM started. It simply didn’t work. I was left feeling Sony were actively hostile to their customers. Never again!

A Sony Minidisc recorder / player in the early 2000s. So much DRM. So many bugs. I’ll never buy Sony again.

Spot?

You have never tried quitting nicotine!