Out of Pod Experience

What is the point of smoking if there's no smoke? Tell me when there's Eblowsmokefrommymouth

These suppliers operate in Canada: http://www.reddit.com/r/electronic_cigarette/wiki/supplier_list#wiki_canada

I suggest getting something with variable voltage, along with a clearomizer. The iTaste MVP is cheap and it has a 2600mAh li-poly battery that lasts several days without charging, and in an emergency you can even use the thing to charge your phone. It also comes with a decent top-coil clearomizer.

Or use an RBA with a stainless steel mesh wick wrapped in a low-resistance coil with 100% VG liquid, if you want to be a fog machine at least. Not that you'd get much flavor or throat hit out of that, but it's an option!

All prices are local prices.

I used to smoke about 30 Pall Mall Lights (~1.5 packs of 20) per day, each cigarette containing 0.6 mg of nicotine, and a pack costs the rough equivalent of about 3.5 USD.
So, in 30 days, I was spending roughly 150 USD and consuming about 540 mg of nicotine.

Now I'm vaping 60-75 ml per month at a concentration of 20-22 mg/ml average.
That's between 1200 and 1650 mg of nicotine per month, more than double (almost triple possibly).
A 30ml bottle costs under 10 USD (usually under 9 USD), so that's 18-25 USD/month for the liquid, let's say 22 USD.
A decent battery that lasts at least a year costs under 35 USD, so let's say 3 USD per month.
My current favourite cartomizers cost about 8 USD a piece and 3 USD for a heating element replacement kit. I use cleaning dry-burns every 5-6 days or so, replace the heating element every month, and the cartomizer itself every 3 months, so that's under 5 USD/month average.
Grand total costs, call it about 30 USD/month.

So, nicotine from 0.5g up to 1.2-1.6g, price from 150 USD down to 30 USD
=> double/triple nicotine at -80% cost.

...

P.S. If I'd be using VG base instead of PG base liquids (which I won't, because for me VG is nausea-inducing), I'd probably need to clean and replace the heating element a lot more often (since it leaves a lot more residue that's also harder to properly dry-burn), so I'd probably spend closer to 40 USD/month in that case (or even more).

...

P.P.S. A few people are mildly allergic to PG (sore throat or such, almost never anything worse), and there's a slight risk of trace amounts of other somewhat hazardous compounds being present if the liquid manufacturing company cuts corners on quality control.
Also, PG has a much less visible vapour, something which does not please many ex-smokers.
And finally, pure PG has a pretty harsh "throat hit", which takes some getting used to even for heavy smokers (although, it's usually at most a couple of days until you no longer have any problems with it).

All of those things combined make pure PG liquids a lot less sought after in general, and sometimes hard to find available for purchase in some locations.
I personally can't stand anything with more than 20% VG (alongside 80% PG), and prefer pure, 100% PG liquids (if available, and thankfully, so far, I didn't have to search too much to find some).

If you use USA/Canada cigarette pack prices and manage to find similar-priced vaping gear (it should not be a lot more expensive over there), you might even be looking at a higher total cost reduction.

You can literally buy this: http://i.imgur.com/uWTbgoc.jpg

Slight derail...

Ever since I bought my own first e-cig set, I haven't even drawn a single "first hand" puff of tobacco smoke, and I've only been significantly tempted to try a cigarette in the first couple of weeks (but not enough to actually do it, even if I had an already open and nearly full pack on hand as a standby - I still have that pack somewhere, heh, it must be all dried out by now).

Then again, I started vaping for the first few days using uber-heavy-duty clear liquid (pure PG, no aroma whatsoever, nicotine content 36mg/ml), so I was chock-full of nicotine constantly anyway. I really didn't get a chance to crave nicotine to begin with (that was my plan from the get go, actually).
Other people start with tobacco-like flavours of mild nicotine concentrations, and end up kind of unsatisfied in several different ways because of it (not enough nicotine, flavour too different from actual cigarettes, while also having high expectations).
I'd recommend anybody to start with the HIGHEST nicotine concentration they can find. That's usually found in base liquids from DIY kits, usually 36mg/ml, but there are some with 50mg/ml or even higher - you can add any flavours you like to it (I'd skip that for the first day at least), without adding any of the 0mg/ml base liquid in the same kit (again, at least for the first day ; you can add a bit though if you find a 40++ mg/ml base-containing kit).

It only took about 1 month to start being mildly bothered by the smell of cigarette smoke nearby after I've switched to vaping, and in 6 months, it's as if I would have never been a smoker myself.
And I don't mean bothered in the sense of craving it, but in the sense of being repulsed by it.

P.S.
There's a company called "Heaven Gifts", they also make 100% PG liquids, both just flavourless bases (0, 36 and 50 mg/ml) and normal liquids with VERY strong flavours (only up to 36mg/ml for the flavoured ones) which still retain a decent amount of aroma even after a 50-50 dilution with flavourless base liquids.
Another company, "Flavourart" sells (alongside regular liquids) aroma bottles (some aromas are quite attractive and hard to find otherwise) and various additives (to either enhance bitterness or mask it, to enhance the visual vapour production for PG liquids, and so on and so forth). A single tiny (5ml) aroma or additive bottle could easily last for up to a year (if you like milder rather than overpowering aroma levels), since you can add just a couple of drops in a fairly large quantity of DIY liquid to enhance it the way you like it.

Taste is subjective obviously but if you bought it at a corner store or pharmacy, of course it's going to be garbage.

Oookay... I've seen some very strange self made atomizers and battery mods but that thing is just golden :o I want one!

oh btw repairable atomizers are another awesome thing since the material for the heating coil and wick are dirt cheap and you can influence the amount of vapor, throat hit and flavor intensity yourself. Pretty much like fitting internet space ships. Running a "low-flavor-intensive smoke grenade" here.
However that "smoke grenade" has the same problem with liquid which minmatar have with ammo. It burns through it like a mofo.

ninja edit: however those bad boys are not really the best thing to start with because they are so darn expensive and it usually takes some time until you figure out how to actually create a good heating coil. In addition with using disposable atomizers/cartomizers first you got sort of a reference point of how things are supposed to work.

You can get 50mL bottles from ECBlends and Mount Baker Vapor for $10-15 apiece. Also, eGo pass-throughs are "okay" but I personally prefer a 1300mAh Vision Spinner (eGo Twist clone, not passthrough, but it's better than the Joyetech one IMO) or an iTaste MVP which is a bit pricier but it can charge in pass-through mode and it has much better battery capacity to boot.