From myscubastory: A lot of people myself included keep giving beginners the advice NOT to buy gear for a while but to rent and figure out what they really need or want. I was actually given this advice from a good friend before I bought MY gear . . . but I wanted to dive, and to dive I needed gear, so I made the best decisions I could at the time. Most of them were okay, but a couple were, in retrospect, bad decisions.

If I had it to do over, I would NOT: Buy a console computer. My wife and I, for reasons I can’t clearly remember, decided that wrist-mounted gauges would be too much hassle. We were wrong. Consoles are too much hassle. Either they hang, or you clip them up to something and then have to pull them out to look at them. I have since bought a wrist computer and intend to give up the console. I would also NOT: Equip my BC with an Air2. It seemed like a good idea at the time, eliminating a hose and improving streamlining (my wife and I wanted simple gear, streamlined, and standardized for the two of us . . . small wonder I’m going DIR, huh?) It is a very awkward device to use for air-sharing, and even more complicated if you have to do an ascent. If I had bought a second second stage, converting my gear to a DIR setup would be much simpler as well.

So what gear-buying decisions did other people make that they regretted later?