Haha .. I love it !! My family (ie: in-laws, parents, extended relatives) think my wife and I are crazy because we prefer to rent.
They all have this "old world" way of thinking that states you MUST own a home to be successful. I got into a "light" argument recently about why we feel renting is better for us now.
It was a no win situation ... so from now on I'm going to quietly be a minimalist-renter-person. :) We're home/unschooling our children so if we decide to pick up and move across country tomorrow we can !
The only thing I need to do now is find a way to freelance my computer skills instead of being a nameless cog in the corporate machine.

To me, materialistic means caring more about what brands you own and judging others based on what "the materialist" deems appropriate.

I think advertising companies are mainly to blame for people becoming materialistic.. I remember as a kid owning a pair of knock off Adidas (they had 4 stripes) .. and being ridiculed at school because they weren't "real". LOL

When it comes to technology I try and get as much life as I can out of each item. Our TV is NOT a flat panel, my PC is prob 8 or 9 years old, and I have a 4gig iPod mini 2nd gen (no colors, video or pictures) everything still works fine for me :)

I don't think that owning quality items makes you materialistic, but if you have a working PC and go out and buy the newest model with 32core CPU and 256gigs of ram just to update your "status quo" .. then you're being materialistic... using inanimate objects to show your self worth.

toss the covers on about right = bed made
hang up or fold laundry right from the dryer = no ironing .. we don't even own an iron :)

Mowing the grass ALL THE TIME .. I rent so I don't "really" have a lawn. If i did, I think i would just give it a quick cut every 2 weeks or so .. I see people watering the grass so it grows, fertilizing it, putting down insecticides, etc .. just to cut it "perfectly" every two days !! HUGE WASTE OF TIME. I'd rather spend time outdoors playing with my kids or hiking in the woods !! If I ever own a home I'm gonna replicate a "desert vista", cacti and all .. just so theres no grass to cut ;)

For me, the cons definitely outweigh the pros. I DO love to read, but I don't end up reading a ton of books.. so the ridiculously initial cost of ebook readers is a huge issue. I can use my netbook to read ebooks already, it cost less than most ebook readers and oh yeah .. it's a computer too !! ;)

As nice as "e-text" looks it can't replace the feel of a real book you can get comfy with on the couch.

Also one thing to consider when using a device like the kindle is that you're agreeing to their terms of use when you purchase an ebook. I can't stand all the DRM crap that you don't have to deal with if you have a "real" book. I should hope I never have to worry that someone from my local book store is going to walk into my home and take back books they deem I shouldn't own !! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32014285/ns/technolog...

Maybe once there's a reader for around twenty dollars and the ebooks are less expensive than the hard copy i'll consider it.

Great ideas !! I tell people all the time "backup doesn't mean redundancy" !!

I use an external Western Digital drive connected to our Windows desktop. I also have FreeNAS setup on an old PIII machine. I'm using "rsync" (already built into *nix) on my Linux machine to backup files on the NAS.

As far as USB keys I have a 4 gig Lexar drive encrypted with all the stuff I use on an almost daily basis.

I'm sure the programs that come with thumb drives are great, but I recommend Truecrypt for encrypting your data. Runs portable, cross platform (Win,Linux, OSX) you can setup a hidden volume so even if you were forced to give your password (say in an airport) you just give them the "fake" password it opens the encrypted drive but it looks empty !! great tool !!