Yes, people do tend to forget that Techs can use the old Novice allocations on HF, and that is too bad, because this really is useful.
A recap, Technicians do have the use of all VHF and up ham frequencies (all legal ham freqs above 30 MHz) at full legal limit, and people tend to fixate on that. But Techs also can use the old Novice allocations, which allow CW (CW is an abbreviation that has come to mean Morse code in the HF communications world, including with hams) on 80, 40, 15, and 10 meters, and voice on a small segment of 10 meters. Power in these allowed Novice segments can be up to 200 Watts PEP. 200 Watts on CW can easily get you the world on these bands, even without great conditions. Under only average conditions you can count on coast-to-coast coverage using CW and 200 Watts on 40 meters.
Yes, you can use QRP on HF (power levels at 5 Watts or less on HF is considered "QRP", or low power) and get some inexpensive equipment. And QRP can be a fun challenge. But as for reliable communications, QRP can be frustrating beyond direct path distances, meaning distance much beyond the horizon.
Because of this potential frustration I never recommend to a new user a QRP power level radio. Often for the cost of a decent new QRP rig you can pick up a nice full power (typically in the 100 Watt range) used radio. And you can always turn the power down to QRP levels if you want or need to. Better to have the power and not need it than to need it and not have it.
As for not learning Morse and using computers, yes you can do that, but there are pitfalls here. The following is NOT meant to discourage this in any way, only to point out the things people need to be aware of. By all means, use software and CW, just be aware of some of the shortcomings. While I have done Morse by ear since the 1960's I still sometimes let a machine do the work for me.
I have used every Morse reading program I am aware of, including professional level software that costs in the multi thousands of dollars for a license, and compared to humans, CW copying programs make mistakes...often. Why is that?
They must have a decent SNR to be able to hear and decode the CW, and on HF the SNR often fluctuates, meaning that a program might copy great for part of the transmission, and not so great for other parts. With CW, skilled humans can work with low signal levels resulting in SNRs sometimes of only 1 dB, software, operating in real time, often requires 6 to 12 dB to make out the information. And noise/QRM/QRN will impact software copied CW when it might not impact human copied code. So software does OK on clear, reasonably strong, CW, and much less well on weak stuff.
Also, CW is a series of dots and dashes (typically said verbally as "dits" and "dahs" to more approximate the sounds you hear) in specific sequences and ratios. A letter / number / figure is called a character, the dots and dashes within a character are called elements. All basic timing of these are based on the dot (dit) length for a given word rate, the dit is the basic clock unit. So spaces between elements (the blank time between dashes and dots within a character) are one dit long. A dash (dah) is 3 dits long. The pause between characters (letter, numbers, figures) is 3 dits long, or the same time as one dah. The pause between words is 7 dits long.
The point of that description of how CW works is that CW copying software expects that spacing / format with some programmed in variations allowed. But human sent CW can be very variable. People can speed up, slow down, pause, etc, they are not machines. Every time the human sending the code changes things the software trying to copy must adjust, and it often misses a character or two each time it does. So in this respect CW software does relatively well at copying machine sent Morse, but not as good at human cent code.
The problem with all this is that unless you have some level of CW ability yourself you may not be able to tell that the software is in error. If the output of the program looks like gibberish...was that what was sent? Or did the software make a mistake?
And CW is supposed to be a minimalist approach to communications, requiring minimum gear and able to achieve communications under conditions when voice is not usable (CW is usable, when decode by humans, at much lower SNRs, than voice). Adding a computer and software to this increases complexity, points of failure, and power requirements. If you have all that gear and infrastructure then why not use one of the digital modes that is better suited to machine copy? Yeah, you can't do that with a Tech license on HF, but man, they can work well under poor conditions.
T!