I’m headed on a cruise to Alaska next week and it’s made me think about just how portable I really am.
I’m currently watching the TV on my laptop’s hard drive (ripped there from legally-bought DVD’s) streamed over AirVideo to my iPad. That same ipad can be a second monitor for my laptop if I’m on a forgiving wireless network. My husband said we should bring some DVD’s — in response I handed him my portable USB hard drive and told him to throw it on there. I fall asleep to the words of Terry Pratchett whispered lovingly from the headphones of my iPod, rather than the cassette of chamber music and guitar music that my sister and I dozed off to as children.
And even for software development, I now do it from a Ubuntu 10.04 image installed under VMWare on my laptop, so I don’t even need internet access to do development (or, if I have it, I don’t need a good connection.)
My “stuff I need” list keeps getting smaller and smaller each time I turn around.
If we had reasonable wireless providers here with reasonable data plans, I could even stop caring about wired internet for my work and (non-gaming) entertainment.
It’s very enabling from a high-mobility/low-stuff perspective… exactly what we need if we’re interested in living in 100-200 square feet in a few years.
I’m so glad you’re going on a cruise to Alaska! I think you’ll really adore it!
I got a nook a few months ago, and was thrilled at how much lighter it allowed me to pack… No more need to fill an entire backpack with books.
Enjoy the cruise!
I haven’t gotten a dedicated book-reader, but i have started reading books on my phone, with some success. I still like physical books, but the phone means i always have a book handy and never need to throw one in my bag.
Actually, that’s my experience in general: if i have my laptop and my phone, which are both very light, i can do basically anything i might need to do. But i still own a lot of junk (i’m starting to pack to move, so the amount of junk i own is weighing on my mind at the moment), and i’m still disinclined to get rid of it.
Yeah I have my ipad, but it’s the ipad version 1 and it’s heavy, and hurts my shoulders if I’m using it for too long for reading (I tend to contort oddly during reading.) I also don’t like that the ipad can’t be used in the sun.
However, despite the downsides, the fact that I have a playtime of “3 days, 1 hour, 11 minutes, and 3 seconds” on the Boggle game says that I clearly have found the most important niche for my ipad outside of screen sharing or video playing…
Once we do the RV thing, I’ll probably grab either a nook or a kindle, but I looked at the prices for the cruise and they’re still a little high for totally impulsive reading when technically I *do* have an ipad.