[jasonkester]

Handy ROI calculator: Trading four days of otherwise billable work to save $1,000 makes sense if you value your time at $31.25/hr or less.

Given that the tradeoff isn't even "end up with an equivalent thing at the end of the day", I'd like to take the chance to thank the author for taking the bullet for us on this one and being honest about how much work really goes in to one of these builds.

I bet he'll save a lot of people a lot of pain and money.

[ranebo]

The return is even less when you factor system upgrades in. I'm glad you got that impression, I originally wrote it up for my friends that were interested as a form of persuading them against it. I perhaps should have made the "con" section larger.

[captainmuon]

I have to applaud anybody who can just take an arbitrary hour of their life and earn $31.25.

Most people I know earn about half of that (after taxes), and only during work hours. Outside of work hours, we get nothing. Sure, I could freelance or get a second job (which I neither want nor need), but there is no option with a one-hour granularity.

If I decide to build a Hackintosh, there is no other equivalent thing I could be doing that gives me $1000. It goes off my free time. I don't loose money, but I do loose free time in which I could be doing other nice things instead. Of course, maybe it's a fun experience, so it's not even a waste of time.

[otikik]

What is the ROI of the time you invested in your comment? ;)

[oxalo]

Two cents. :V

[vacri]

I really don't understand this point of view, that techies don't enjoy playing with tech, so therefore any such personal work done should be compared to your hourly consulting rate. Some people get a lot of entertainment out of making hybrid systems work.

[hcarvalhoalves]

I think it's clear in the article he setup the system to get work done on Final Cut with a cheaper machine, it was not for leisure.

[vacri]

Business and pleasure can't ever mix? Most (not all, sure) of the techies I know enjoy tinkering, and it's kinda why they're in tech in the first place.

[Void_]

It's what they call, wait, what was it, yeah, fun.

[lucaspiller]

He said he had done this sort of stuff before, as have I, and I would happily do this in my spare time as leisure given the opportunity.