I'd love to hear PG chime in about the chairs. He's been negative on them in an article or two. I think I agree with Joel here. I'm a frugal bootstrapper - I always turn off the heat before I leave my apartment. But cheap chairs can be bad for your back in the long-run. Long-term back problems are a pretty bad trade-off for a thousand bucks. And from looking at the market, it seems like a bit of an either/or scenario: you either get something super cheap, which is bad for your back, you get something mid-range, which falls apart quickly (what Joel was talking about), or you go with something expensive, which lasts for a long time. Either you go all out, or you get a bad solution. I think the pricey option is a pretty sane purchase here.