Top 10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Gear (Without Spending Extra Money)

The life of a tech junkie is expensive, but you don't always need to spend tons of money to get tons of features. Here are some of our favorite ways to add extra features to your tech without paying an arm and a leg. While we here at Lifehacker are all about upcycling, the goal of this list is something different. We're not recycling old, unused tech and turning it into something else, we're taking the stuff you already use and making it better. If you've got old tech lying around that you don't know what to do with, check out some of our favorite repurposing hacks here. Otherwise, read on. 10. Turn a $3 Pen into a $200 Pen Considered by some to be the world's best writing utensils, Mont Blanc pens tend to be on the pricey side (upwards of $200). With a bit of finagling, though, you can actually take a cheap, $3 pen and make it write just as well. All it takes is a cheap Mont Blanc refill cartridge and a bit of scissoring—you should be able to squeeze that amazing ink into your cheap pen to get that experience others pay hundreds of dollars for. (Original Post) 9. Turn a $10 Flashlight into a $95 Flashlight Ever buy a flashlight, only to breathe a sigh of disappointment when you turn it on? While you can't make your $10 flashlightfeel like one of those heavy, expensive ones the police carry, you can make it shine like one—all you need is a new bulb. It's a bit more complicated than that, of course; you'll have to do a bit of modding on the case, but once you're done, you'll have a fantastically bright flashlight without paying the cash necessary to buy one. 8. Add a Macro Lens to Your Phone's Camera Smartphone cameras are getting better all the time, and with the right technique, you canget pretty good shots out of them. However, if you want to beef up the camera's hardware a little bit, you can actuallyreplace your camera's lens with the lens from a DVD player. This will turn your phone's lens into a macro lens capable of taking super-close, super-detailed shots of just about anything. 7. Turn Your Unhealthy Sitting Desk Into a Standing Desk Whether you exercise or not,sitting at a desk all day is bad for you. There are many good reasons to switch to a standing desk, but you may not want to go buy a whole new desk just to try it out. Luckily, you can easily convert your current desk in a myriad of ways: You canbuild up half your desk with a platform, adding a high tabletop to your current desk, or even extending the legs of your desk so its at standing height. Whichever way you slice it, you're getting something a bit healthier for you without ditching your current setup too much. 6. Turn a Pogoplug into a Full-Featured Linux Web Server Pogoplugs are fine media storage devices, but if you're finding that you wish it did a bit more, you can actually hack it into a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) web server by installing Linux on it. After that, you can not only store media on the Pogoplug, but also share files with your friends, host a blog, run a multiplayer gaming server, and tons more, all on your little $50 Pogoplug. Again, this mod takes some work, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper than actually buying a dedicated server, so it's an incredible deal if you're willing to get your hands dirty (figuratively, of course). 5. Turn Your Wii Into a Full-Featured Media Center The Wii is the only video game system without a fully-featured media center built-in, and if you don't have a video game-playing, movie-streaming XBMC box, you're probably a little jealous. Luckily, you can hack your Wii and install the Homebrew modin just a few minutes, and get a bunch of glorious extras like DVD playback, old-school emulators, and tons of others. 4. Turn Your Nook Into a Cheap Android Tablet There's no doubting that some of the new Android tablets are awesome, but they're a bit more expensive than they probably need to be. Instead of buying a new tablet, you can take a less expensive Barnes & Noble Nook Color E-Reader, root it, and run stock Android on it for a much more versatile, very cheap Android tablet. Rooting it takes a bit of work, obviously, but it's certainly worth it to save another $250 or so. (Original Post) 3. Add Advanced Features to Your Point and Shoot Camera Like much of your other tech, your Canon point-and-shoot camera is a great piece of hardware that ships with limited software. With the Canon Hacker's Development Kit, however, you can get RAW support (which you should always use), more advanced photo settings, on-screen info, scripts, and more. Be sure to also check out how to make the best of a CHDK-equipped camera, and if you already have a DSLR, you can supercharge that too with the Magic Lantern enhancement. 2. Turn Your iPod Touch Into an iPhone Whether you aren't on an iPhone-friendly carrier or you just don't feel like paying for the full iPhone, you can still get similar functionality out of the iPod touch with a few tweaks. You'll need a VoIP app, a constant Wi-Fi connection or Verizon Mi-Fi, and an iPod-compatible headset to talk, but once you've got these things together you should be able to make calls over your iPod just like you would an iPhone. And, after all, that's the only real difference between the two, and you got it without being stuck on their carriers or paying the extra $400 for an unlocked phone. 1. Turn Your $60 Router Into a $600 Router If your cheap router isn't fulfilling your needs, you can give it a bit of a boost with the open-source DD-WRT firmware. DD-WRT can boost your signal strength, give certain programs bandwidth priority, and add a whole host of other advanced options to your router that you'd generally only find on super expensive models. Essentially, you're getting a $600 router out of the deal with just a simple firmware upgrade at no cost—giving your router a new lease on life and your wallet a repreive from another electronics spending spree. If DD-WRT is a little nerve-racking, you might want to check out the very similar but more user-friendly Tomato. Photo by Rusty Haskell. These aren't the most time-friendly hacks, but they'll be much nicer to your wallet than springing for the expensive, high-end tech you've always dreamed for—and in the end, you get a product that's just as good. Got any of your own favorite tech-supercharging projects? Share them with us in the comments.