I bought a new lap­top. It’s a Win­dows machine. I have not installed Linux. I have no devel­op­ment tools. I could not be happier. (Let’s pause for a moment to let that sink in, as those who know me will be gasp­ing in shock and bewil­der­ment.) Career changes and per­sonal goals have changed the way I use my per­sonal tech­nol­ogy. The process of buy­ing this new lap­top was dif­fi­cult, not because the tech itself was obscure or obtuse, but because before I could buy any­thing, I needed to define what I was look­ing for in a new com­puter. Part I: What Has Come Before  As a  pro­fes­sional pro­gram­mer, I’ve demanded a lot from the hard­ware I’ve owned in the last fif­teen years. Lots of dev tools. Lots of tin­ker­ing. Dif­fer­ent boot par­ti­tions. Wipe, install, wipe, install, wipe, restore, install. Upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. Big­ger, bet­ter, faster more. Any­thing to make sure the code ran and that my lap­top was func­tion­ing the way I wanted it to. [pullquote_right]Most of you are famil­iar with the virtues of a pro­gram­mer.  There are three, of course: lazi­ness, impa­tience, and hubris. –Larry Wall[/pullquote_right]Tinker tin­ker. Noth­ing is ever good enough, there’s always some­thing to tweak, some­thing new to learn. Shiny pro­gram does X, but shiny pro­gram needs Y to func­tion, so you need to install these spe­cial libraries and com­pile them which means hav­ing to install a spe­cial com­piler.… …And of course I needed a Mac because they were the Best, and I wanted noth­ing but the Best because noth­ing less will do for what I wanted to do… …Except I needed to wipe OS X and install Linux (or at least have a dual, if not triple boot (because, if you are extremely clever, you can run OS X and Win­dows and Linux on the same Mac…)) because Soft­ware Free­dom is impor­tant and Steve Jobs isn’t allowed to tell me what I can do with my hard­ware… Part II: The Recent Dilemma  …and then the Shiny Awe­some Mac­book died. What to do? Well…naturally…go out and buy some Win­dows lap­top that I could put Linux on.  So, you know, I could code. Except that I wasn’t really inter­ested in writ­ing code in my off work time any­more. I had other goals. Writ­ing, for instance. And while Linux is a great oper­at­ing sys­tem, I had other use cases that, while pos­si­ble in Linux, I did not want to devote the time to learn, tweak, tin­ker and oth­er­wise spend time on. I wanted to spend more time work­ing and less time tin­ker­ing. [pullquote_left]Computers make it eas­ier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it eas­ier to do don’t need to be done.  –Andy Rooney[/pullquote_left]But…I got a spiffy tablet at Google I/O, and in an effort to save money, I tried to use that for writ­ing. Not so good. Then the Chrome­book arrived. Bet­ter, but only incre­men­tally, and not suit­able for the way I like to work (namely, dis­con­nected from the Inter­net). If I wanted reli­ably and ease of use, I would need to get a Mac, right? Except…geez…that’s a lot of cash, and since I did not want to be using credit unless I had to, sav­ing up the dough would be a long process. By this point, I’d been with­out a real com­puter for a good while and not hav­ing a reli­able tool was dri­ving me (and my poor long-suffering wife) crazy. So…what to do? Part III: An Epiphany  After six months of con­tem­pla­tion on the sub­ject, I real­ized that my use case for a com­puter had changed radically:

1. I was no longer inter­ested in spend­ing loads of time in front of a screen, tinkering.
2. I did not plan to be spend­ing time writ­ing code or work­ing on cutting-edge tech­ni­cal projects.
3. I was not inter­ested in my com­puter being a state­ment about me or my lifestyle, that is, I did not need to own the Porsche (Mac), because all I needed was some­thing reli­able like a midrange Toyota.
4. I wanted to sim­ply get things done with­out the end­less tech­ni­cal dis­trac­tions of the past. .

The major epiphany I had was that, for most of my life, I would not use the tool as intended. This is all part of the hacker mind­set, and it is not, by nature, a neg­a­tive thing. As a coder, a hacker, a tin­kerer I would have to get inside the machine, under­stand the work­ings, and make it do things: cool things, yes, but not nec­es­sar­ily use­ful ones. I would buy a ham­mer and try to turn it into a rock­et­ship. Now…I realized…all I really wanted was a ham­mer. Part IV: Get­ting Things Done  After all the rumi­na­tion and delib­er­a­tion, I knew two things.

1. I value the data I pro­duce more than the device on which it was produced.
2. I wanted a sys­tem that allowed me to get my work done and oth­er­wise get out of the way.

The choice was obvi­ous. No need to do any­thing spe­cial. I went out and spent $600 on a new Toshiba lap­top with Win­dows 7. I do not look under the hood. I install my pro­grams, I use them and then I shut them down. I do not spend count­less hours work­ing on pretty dis­trac­tions, I get my work done. The Moral of the Story A good friend told me this story about tech­nol­ogy vs. per­sonal happiness:

I used to work on Linux until the wee hours, work­ing to get it to install, to con­fig­ure it all the way I liked, mak­ing things work. Then…one night, my wife walked into the room. She leaned over my shoul­der and whis­pered, “Do you know how much sex you’ve missed out on because of Linux?” And that’s when I started buy­ing Macs.

Your tech­nol­ogy choices should sup­port your real goals, not the things that dis­tract you from them. Do not be afraid to change: using tech out of habit is a kind of mad­ness, and in the end, detracts from your pro­duc­tiv­ity and your hap­pi­ness. [pullquote_left]Besides the noble art of get­ting things done, there is the noble art of leav­ing things undone. The wis­dom of life con­sists in the elim­i­na­tion of non-essentials. –Lyn Yutang[/pullquote_left]In a world where tech­nol­ogy is a much about per­sonal image as it is func­tion­al­ity, we all need to dis­re­gard the mar­ket­ing and think for our­selves. Once I dis­re­garded my own assump­tions I was able to make a sane choice. I am not only con­tent, I’m down­right happy. How have your tech­nol­ogy needs changed? What would you do dif­fer­ently now when choos­ing hard­ware or soft­ware than you would have five years ago?