I have to completely agree with Russ about the loss of productivity in using two computers.

I've been using a single laptop for work for nearly 4 years now. It's been great because since I owned it, I didn't really have to worry about the division between work and personal issues that Russell brings up near the end of the post.

Before I used a single laptop for everything, I had things split between at least two machines if not three at any given time (home personal desktop, mobile personal laptop, and office work desktop). Switching away from that made life so much easier. This was particularly true with email handling, but other things as well. I felt like when I would configure something in a nifty way that it would actually apply to everything I did rather than just on that one machine.

Now that I have a new laptop and it's work owned, I haven't fully decided if I'm going to worry about the personal issue thing yet. Since we're encouraged to take our laptops home, I may not. Not only that, but it's not against the rules to install your own software to be used after hours or at home (such as media players (though music is a work hours thing), games, etc.). And as Russell put it, it can often come down to a measure of value. This post here should be damned near valueless.

Speaking of work, I'm sure I have some to do. ;)

Russell Beattie Notebook - One Computer

Posted by Shane on August 12, 2005 8:02 AM | Permalink