Unless you're a financial Jedi Knight or economic Sith Lord, you probably don't have a ton of control over our turbulent economy. What you can reign over is your spending and saving—and when you know where they are, you can take advantage of deep discounts and general freebies across the web. Even you're not much for coupons and you're occasionally unable to resist splurging on a new tech toy, you can save some serious cash on many purchases, or avoid them entirely, by spending a few minutes online. Check out some of our favorite current free or cheap deals and low-hassle discounts for your weekend viewing. Don't dawdle, though, because some deals are ending soon. The full list is below. Photo by jswieringa.

10. Get 15-30% off laptop art.

If you've spent any time in a Wi-Fi-providing coffee shop, you know that MacBooks look a lot alike, and the most creative most folks get with their rigs is usually a single-color skin. Break your laptop out of conformity at Infectious.com, which is offering 15 to 30 percent off adhesive art, including stick-ons for laptops and walls. The skins, on sale through Nov. 4, tend toward the feminine, but the gallery is pretty intriguing to flip through—and imagine your own gear sporting an eye-grabbing, easily-identifiable look.

9. Get free AT&T Wi-Fi on an iPhone at Starbucks and other nationwide hotspots.

After two false starts, AT&T started offering free Wi-Fi service to iPhone owners at their hotspots at Starbucks and Barnes & Noble and other locations earlier this week. Unfortunately for those of us who relished the idea of browser-tweaking freebies on laptops, this iteration uses a text message to confirm one's iPhone-having-ness. Still, it's a faster connection at a wide selection of hotspots, and laptop-luggers only need to spend even the tiniest bit each month off a Starbucks gift card to get a month's worth of two-hour passes.

8. Get your real free credit report.

If you're looking for the federally-mandated, completely free, no-service-cancellation-needed online credit report you're entitled to once per year, head to AnnualCreditReport.com. Use it as explanatory ammo when applying for a loan, see what issues are waiting to be settled, and avoid the temptation of a smirking dilettante who wants to sign you up for an easy-to-miss yearly credit protection fee.

7. Get free or cheap books.

For those willing to look, new and used books you've been meaning to read can be had for the price of one of your barely-touched tomes, a postage fee, or just a pittance for downloading. PaperbackSwap (which deals with hardcovers as well) is a neat system, where mailing books out gets you credits you can "spend" to receive them, with no transaction fees, and print-and-mail forms handily provided. BookMooch works much the same, except the organizers say you can maintain a 2-to-1 ratio of received to sent books with your credits. Check out screenshots of those services and other free and cheap means of finding books, both print and audio, at our free/cheap book photo gallery.

6. Get $50 off an Amazon Kindle thanks to Oprah.

Oprah Winfrey announced last week that her favorite gadget had no 3G connectivity and a pretty low-power graphics processor—the Amazon Kindle, an online/offline e-reading device that's more than just a flat screen you can hold. To entice her viewers and Book Club readers into checking it out, her site offers a coupon code--OPRAHWINFREY—that gets a buyer $50 off the normally $359 Kindle. The code expires today (Nov. 1, 2008), however, so if you're thinking about getting your eyes off the back-lit screen for a bit, now's the time to grab one of these nifty gadgets. Here's more on how the Kindle can save you time (and perhaps money).

5. Ship online purchases for free.

FreeShipping.org is one of those URLs that you could imagine turning into a veritable spam factory, but it thankfully hosts a roundup of free shipping coupons found for more than 600 stores. If you think you can do better, or your online merchant isn't covered, also check with Free Shipping On, which sometimes hosts different versions of similar coupons. If you're buying from Amazon, though, and you're just a few bucks short of hitting your free shipping target, try the Amazon Filler Item Finder, which takes in a dollar amount and shoots back hopefully useful plug-ins to save money and get you more gear.

4. Get a year of free online Carbonite backup with a LaCie drive.

It normally costs $49.95 to back up unlimited data for one year to Carbonite, which runs at least second place amongst our backup-savvy readers. At the moment, though, any external hard drive purchase from LaCie comes with a CD enabling one free year of service. So for the price of something you might've bought anyways, you get both external and remote automated backups—pretty much the gold standard of data safety. Carbonite is currently Windows-only, but soon to be Mac-compatible.

3. Get Microsoft Office at 91% off.

Microsoft wants college students to get familiar with their Office lineup—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, et al.—so they'll be more apt to use and buy it in their professional futures. College students usually need some kind of official Office product at some point in their studies, and they don't have a lot of cash. Those major forces meet up at "The Ultimate Steal," in which the Redmond giant gives away its Office Ultimate 2007 package for $59.95 to anyone with a valid .edu address. The real deal, however, is that it seems any old .edu email—including the alumni accounts usually given away for free—get you through the door. One neat combination of Office tools is used by our own Jason Fitzpatrick, who gets things done with Outlook and OneNote 2007.

2. Keep a real web site with a custom domain for $10/year.

In the way-early days of the web, having your "own web site" meant you were all kinds of experienced with servers, protocols, and rack mounting. These days, you don't even need your own hosted space to maintain a web presence—blogging platforms, page creators, and Google apps (out the wazoo) are practically begging to do all the heavy-code-lifting for you. With a $10-per-year domain name purchase (and some can be found cheaper), anyone who hasn't dipped their toes into reclaiming or parking their name online can do so without spending a penny more. Reference Gina's guide to hosting your domain with free apps. If you want to get really DIY on it, you can still host your web content yourself by assigning a domain name to your home server.

1. Choose free software and service alternatives over paid versions.

We highlight free software—both the "as in beer" and "as in speech" varieties—every day at Lifehacker, because a good software solution can save a needy person serious dough. Our compiled free replacements for paid software pulled down $225 worth of software and services, and ran through the free alternatives for Flickr Pro accounts, push email, and simple remote desktop connectors. Our readers had their own libre workarounds as well, suggesting more than $310 in savings on screen capture tools, hard drive imaging, and Slingbox-like streaming video.

What recent or evergreen deals do you turn to when you're looking to save a few dollars? What deal-finder apps or sites are your first stop for frugality? Spread the wealth in the comments.