PAY FOR SENSOR SIZE, NOT MEGAPIXELS David Pogue, who writes the State of the Art column for The Times, has made this the camera shopper’s rallying cry for years. But it bears repeating because the industry still promotes one now-useless specification and obfuscates a far more important one. Just know this: Almost all cameras have enough megapixels now; it is the size of the image sensor that largely determines the quality of an image. Sensor size is confusing, because manufacturers use different formats. In response to ’a blog post from Mr. Pogue, someone created sensor-size.com, a site that converts sensor measurements for an easy comparison.

PAY FOR SPEED, NOT CHANNELS For Internet access, most cable operators offer tiers of service, usually a broadband version of coach, business class and first class. The top tier is usually more than most people will ever need, but the base package may groan under the weight of heavy video streaming. Better to move up a tier, which should add about $10 to your monthly bill.

That way, you can cancel most of your movie channels and go with services like Netflix, Hulu Plus or Amazon Instant. Their costs are considerably less — either pay-per-video or less than $10 a month — than what you pay for Cinemax, TMC, Starz, Encore and other movie channels. (You may want to keep HBO or Showtime if you like those channels’ original programming — those shows will probably not be available anywhere else for a while.)

If you have a recent TV or Blu-ray player, you may already have access to Netflix and the other providers as built-in “widgets” that will connect through your home’s Internet connection. If not, $99 will get you an Apple TV or you can get a Roku box, which starts at $59; both will connect to streaming services. Over the course of a year, the cost of the hardware and services will be far less than the monthly fees you were paying the cable company.

PAY FOR APPLECARE, NOT MOBILEME Apparently, Apple makes some products that people really like. But Mobile Me, the company’s suite of cloud-based services, does not have the same draw. Maybe it is because most of what Mobile Me can do is available free from other companies. Web e-mail? Gmail. Photo storage? Flickr. Cloud storage? Dropbox. There used to be one killer app on MobileMe — Find My iPhone. But now that is available for free to all iPhone users, so that is one less reason to pay $99 a year for the service.

But saving on MobileMe frees up some cash for something more valuable, and that’s AppleCare, Apple’s extended hardware coverage and phone support. If you buy an Apple product without AppleCare, you get 90 days of free phone support and one year of hardware coverage (note that accidents like spills, drops and other mishaps are never covered, only malfunctioning equipment). If something goes wrong after that, you must pay for any phone support or repair work, and the prices are high — from $30 to $50. But purchase AppleCare (which costs from $29 for an Apple TV to $349 for larger MacBook Pros) and you get three years of phone support and repair coverage.