Only the one PC - theSpoke.net

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Only the one PC

Up until now I've had three PCs in my working life. One at work, one at home and a tablet in the middle. When my office PC went west a little while back I thought I'd see how I would manage with just one machine, the portable.

I must admit it works rather well. I've got a docking cradle for the tablet, and it is now my main machine. It is just about fast enough for VS 2005 development and does everything that I want. I've noticed already that it is much easier now I don't have to worry where the latest versions of my files are. My only real concern is that if I lose it, I really do lose everything, and so I'm having to be more careful about backups - but that is probably something I should have been addressing anyway.

I'd reccommend anyone to have a go at this, it has not been as painful as I thought it would be.

And the office is much quieter with just a laptop running.

posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 1:39 PM by RobMiles

# re: Only the one PC @ Friday, February 03, 2006 9:22 AM

That is how I have been working for the last several years. One laptop (although I do have a second on, a Tablet, as a spare and for occasional use. I find the laptop powerful enough for what I'm doing and the ability to take everything with me when I travel is really nice. People are surprised when they find out I don't have a desktop or a tower somewhere though.

AlfredTwo

# re: Only the one PC @ Friday, February 03, 2006 10:18 AM

Have you heard about Microsoft SyncToy? It is a simple powertoy that allows you to define different syncronization rules between different storages (local drives, network shares, memory cards...).

You can download it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e0fc1154-c975-4814-9649-cce41af06eb7

Use of this tool can be helpful in cases of backing up and having the latest version.

compozer

# re: Only the one PC @ Saturday, February 04, 2006 5:48 PM

I'm a fan of desktops and although extremely sad to admit... get a kick out of building them. But for the past six months I've been running desktop free, just a single notebook.

And frankly I love the life... EVERYTHING goes with me anywhere I go. That's just what I love about it... when I'm at home I dual monitor it or use it infront of the fire, at school I can take it around campus if need be, in the afternoon I can go down to Caffe Nero and do work on it, then for prep time use it in my boarding house, if I want to show someone a video I can take it around. And every time, my settings/configuration/programs/data is always with me.

I'm not a gamer so my spec. isn't top end, however it has all I need + a bit more so that's great :). The screen is great, big enough to use at home as a main PC, but small enough to use whilst travelling.

As for backup, I backup at least once a month - and during that time important stuff (like coursework files & code) are done a couple of time a week onto a memory card or school servers.

DickinsMCF

# re: Only the one PC @ Monday, February 06, 2006 12:12 PM

I cut my software teeth working for a PC manufactuer, and was part of the laptop wave for many years. However, strange as it may seem, I was never a fan of laptops as desktop replacements. Try as they might, laptops had none of the things I considered essential: processing speed, hard drive space, screen I could look at for more than a few minutes, etc. So I had the desktop at work, the desktop at home, the laptop for travel, and either a stack of floppies to transfer data or the old favorite LapLink cable.

Two years ago, however, I got a Toshiba Satelite, and the world changed on me. My desktop at home is slowly gathering dust (still useful for somethings, like a printer server 8^), my desktop is practically off, and my laptop is my best friend.

Mr_I

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