Consolidating Down To A Single Laptop Computer.

Posted: September 18th, 2009 | 13 Comments »

I am on my way to being a one-computer household. I wrote a while back about wanting to downsize and simplify my office, and I am finally starting the process this week. Since I wanted to make my laptop my one and only computer, I ordered a new, more powerful 13″ MacBookPro with 4GB of RAM and a 250 GB internal hard drive, which arrived last weekend.

macbookpro Consolidating Down To A Single Laptop Computer.

Over this past week, I have been slowly moving all my files from my MacPro Tower and old laptop to this new computer. I mainly only have 3 types of files stored on my computer – my music, my photos, and my Final Cut Pro project files. Everything else is stored “in the cloud” with Google (see my post “How I Use Google To Organize My Entire Online Digital Life” for more on that if you are interested) so I can keep things simple here at home. Once I am done consolidating everything to my new laptop, I will be selling my old computers — leaving me with just this great laptop and my iPhone. I am looking forward to having just 1 computer to maintain! A few other things I am using with this new laptop in order to keep things simple include:

iDrive – I am going to try these guys for online automatic backups of all my user files. For $5 a month, you can’t beat the price.

Dropbox – Wrote about them before and just love the simplicity for moving/storing files or for providing downloads of bigger files for friends.

Western Digital Passport Drive – Still going to be doing local backups with Apple’s Time Machine to my passport drive.

And of course, my Simple, Organized, Clutter-Free Desktop keeps me sane.

I am so happy to be finally be paring my computer needs down to a single machine. The simplicity of having everything I need in one place, instead of 2 (or even 3), will certainly help me in my quest to be more organized and live a more “minimalistic” digital lifestyle. How do you “compute”? Do you have 1 machine that does everything you need it to, or are you like I was and have multiple machines to maintain?

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13 Comments on “Consolidating Down To A Single Laptop Computer.”

1 Deborah Kunzie said at 12:40 pm on September 18th, 2009:
WOW! You beat me to the same post! I did the exact same thing. I have been using three MAC’s. White Mac, a Mini Mac and PowerMac. I sold all of them! Bough the same Macbook Pro as you and I bought the 24″ new display screen from the refurbished dept. It was just delivered a couple of hours ago. Two days ahead of schedule. I am in heaven. Now the grueling process of switching files, mostly photos over. But yes, I use dropbox and Mobileme. Going to run my entire business from it. We shall see how that goes. Good luck with your new mac!!
2 Mark said at 1:19 pm on September 18th, 2009:
Just to clarify, you have 3 backups? iDrive, Dropbox and the external hard drive? I’d like to figure out my back up “system” for my computer this weekend so your insights would be great.
3 David said at 1:51 pm on September 18th, 2009:
Mark, I have 2 “real” backups – my external HD I have here in the house and I am going to try out iDrive for an online solution. Dropbox is for moving files, accessing them somewhere else (like on my iphone eventually) and for providing downloads of bigger files for friends/clients when I cannot email them. Hope that helps!

Thanks Deborah, I can’t wait to be all settled in! How do you like that monitor, and is it in good shape? Considering picking one up myself…
4 Deborah Kunzie said at 1:56 pm on September 18th, 2009:
David,
Looks brand new! Not a mark anywhere. Beautiful and I am loving the big screen size. Just plugged in to my laptop, closed the lid and bingo! No adjustments nothing to do. I love it eliminates more cords! More simplicity!
And 200.00 bucks cheaper than the brand new one. Was going to get the Macbook Pro there as well but decided against it and picked mine up yesterday from Apple store. Best investment ever…
5 David said at 3:39 pm on September 18th, 2009:
Very cool, will definitely take a look!
6 Paul Eck said at 7:32 am on September 19th, 2009:
Make sure you wipe your hard drives with a good shredding software before you sell your old computers.

I personally have several computers. I have my laptop which is what I do everything on. It dual boots into Ubuntu and Windows XP. I do not use XP very often but every once in a while need to use iTunes or something else that doesn’t work well in Linux yet. My wife has a laptop as well and then I have a server with a 1 terabyte hard drive for backup and pooling files so we both can access them. This is the best solution for us.
7 Jesse said at 12:40 pm on September 20th, 2009:
I went through this process awhile ago, I downsized to just one laptop (at the time a Powerbook G4 12″) and a monitor and docking station for drives, printers, keyboards, etc…now, I’ve gone even farther: I have one laptop (white intel Macbook), my printer is wifi across the room in the corner being inconspicuous, and my backup drive is stored in the cupboard waiting until I actually need it.

And I should mention that until my shipment gets here with a desk, my workstation is the couch, dining table, or coffee shop down the street…I love that this entire city is wired for wireless!
8 David Turnbull said at 11:44 pm on September 20th, 2009:
You might want to try out Mozy instead of iDrive. You get unlimited space, and if you order it for 2 years you can get decent discounts. I paid about $88 USD for 2 years using a coupon code.
9 Joshua Banker said at 12:31 am on September 21st, 2009:
This is a great idea but I don’t know if I could pull it off. The last time I got a laptop it was the low end MacBook so I kept my G5 20 inch iMac. I primarily use my 20 inch iMac to watch DVDs or shows from iTunes in my room. I also use it to back up my 40GB AppleTV that is connected to the TV in the living room. For now this system works so well for me I am going to keep it. Though it does drive the minimalist in my nuts.

I also do the “cloud computing” with dot mac but I am learning more how to use Google for work because we are moving everyone eventually to Google Apps.
10 David said at 8:33 am on September 21st, 2009:
Jesse – More often than not, my couch is my workstation too

David – I tried Mozy last year and it kept failing/disconnecting. So far, iDrive has been ok, and am in day 2 of backing up.

Joshua – I do plan on keeping an external monitor for those long days of coding I have occasionally!
11 vinnie said at 9:41 am on September 23rd, 2009:
Our house has 3 computers: my work-issued laptop, my personal mac mini, and my wife’s macbook. I got the mac mini because I run some “always on” software and I don’t need someone closing the lid on a laptop and putting it to sleep when I need it.

This method works best for me right now because it keeps my work and home “stuff” distinct and my wife can still do what she needs on her own laptop.
12 Dave M said at 12:48 pm on February 9th, 2010:
Ha! I just left a comment on your other post regarding your simplified computer setup. That led me to this post, and I see you mention using iDrive. So, I guess that answers my question:-)

I also have been using iDrive on my Windows 7 laptop and I love it! Tried Mozy a couple times and couldn’t get it to work consistently. It was also much slower than iDrive.

So, this post is a few months old… Are you still using iDrive?
13 David said at 3:28 pm on February 9th, 2010:
Actually, I dont use iDrive anymore – had too many issues with my Mac. Using BackBlaze now and haven’t had a single issue yet.