Well, the last Ink Plus promotion means you have to spend $6K by June 20 to get 90K points which is pretty incredible. Here are some ways to use spend it. You have to do this within three months, so pay attention!
Office supply spending is at 5x. So you can double dip if you buy something from Office Depot or Office Max or Staples. There is not much there but, if you go to Office Max, then you can buy gift cards for later use. Note that Staples uses GiftCardMall, so it doesn’t code as that as it is using the Gift Card Mall URL nor does Office Depot. But some have gotten it to work some of the Office Depot/OfficeMax gift cards are Doordash, Uber, REI Coop, Zappos, Nordstrom, Lowe’s, Airbnb, and Delta. Although Airbnb is a real gift card so they charge $0.63 shipping
Then there is 2% back for restaurants and other spends as another way to get some points.
Good time to buy Computer Hardware
With the end of the pandemic, hardware prices have been crashing, so this is a great time to buy say hard drives. Right now, Newegg Business has a sale on Seagate X20 at $280 for five which is kind of amazing for a 20TB drive. Plus you get Newegg reward points which is nice.
For instance I have a bunch of Cable MoCA adapters that have worked well, so a good time to pick up a pair for $278. This gives you a shared 2.5Gbps network on your old Cable lines.
iPad vs iPad Air vs. VOIP Phones
OK, here’s a great question, we’ve been using a Panasonic proprietary PBX connected via OBiHai to Google Voice, but that whole system is dying. And with a new alarm.com system, we don’t need it to open doors and things, so why not just get an iPad instead of a $175 phone even though there is a nice model with POE, WiFi and it connects to the Yeastar S-412? It seems like that iPBX ship has sailed in modern households. As an example I’ve had a UniFi Phone account for $10/month for three years and have barely used it.
So if you look at it getting an iPad isn’t such a bad deal, the iPad’s 10th generation has USB C charging, and the A14 plus it is as big as a telephone, you just need a nice stand for it and you are set. It is midlife and $449 list $399 at Amazon and Best Buy discount. You could get away with the iPad 9th generation, but I’m just worried that one is closer to no more iOS updates. The iPad Air is much more at $551 and it has the M1 chip and is $499 on discount at Best Buy. In the end, the iPad seems like a good choice, but I’ll probably try one iPad Air to see if the speed matters at all.
A new NAS: Synology R2423+ vs iXSystems Mini R
Amazingly, the last time I bought a NAS was 10 years ago, the DS2413+ and the DS811+ have been great, but the software has been a little cranky and DSM7 is no longer supported on the 11. So time to get an updated one. I actually wanted the iXSystem Mini R which is $1800, but it is not available for 4-6 weeks and has an older Atom processor. I do want to try ZFS (I built a server years ago and it is supposed to be fast, but don’t want to wait long as it all has to clear by June 20), so I’ll try the RS2423+ which is new and rack-mounted. This will retire the Drobos I have which is a good thing.
As an aside at least for me, you should check both Newegg Business which has rewards that work and also the regular Newegg site as that site has a 1% rebate on Rakuten, so all things being equal the Rakuten points are more valuable when tied to an Amex card as it gives you basically a 2% point from Amex.
New Chargers Packs
OK, I got an Anker 633 which I loved (for a great $49 price in a Woot sale), but lost it. I then got an ESR $50 pack but I have to say I didn’t love them. They were much bigger and didn’t have USB-C pass-through charging. So if you go to the Anker site, they have some great direct sales (much better than Amazon, so I recommend them. I also looked at the Anker 622, but it is only 5Kwh and gets warm and the stand isn’t as good.
