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July 2, 2007
Why I need two home computers
About a month ago I realized something fairly significant in my need/preference for personal and professional computing. The realization is that a lone laptop just isn't enough for me to keep my stuff together. I've been operating on a single laptop for many years, it has taken awhile for me to figure out why this doesn't really work for me.
I think the bottom line is one thing...disk space on the laptop is not keeping pace with today's computing needs.
When I bought my MacBook Pro a year ago the largest hard drive was 100 gigs. There are now larger ones available, but even the largest at 200 gigs this would still be an issue.
The problem right now is that with 100G I don't have room for anything more than applications, email, and documents.
Over the past year I've gradually removed the "other" things on my computer off to an external drive to clear space for day-to-day work. First to go were home movies (these consume a huge amount of space). Second to go was my iPhoto library. Next to go is my iTunes library. At this point I have so little space I can't even load up a home movie to burn a copy. I really hate having an external hard drive with stuff I want to use. Either I have to transfer it onto the laptop (slow) or use it directly off the external hard drive (also slow).
So I've decided that I could greatly improve my situation by adding a desktop computer that has a ton of storage, more processing power, and a huge screen. This computer will hold my iTunes, iPhoto, movies, and maybe a backup of some of my laptop files. It will be my working machine while in my office, using the underlying Unix tools for work.
My laptop will continue to operate as my primary mobile machine, have email and all of my personal and work files/documents that I need for on the go. The idea is that I can grab my laptop at any moment and have all work and personal stuff to keep going somewhere else. But while I'm in my office I can enjoy a larger screen, faster processing, unlimited disk space, and active access to my entire digital life.
I hope that for times when I'm on the road my laptop will have space to temporarily hold photos, music or movies until I get back home and can sync them over to the base station.
I guess this plan is still in progress, there might still need to be some tweaking over the next few months on what goes where.
Posted by mike at July 2, 2007 10:29 AM
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