Computing Hardware 2014

Another year is coming to a close.  2013 has been a great year for me as a consultant, with a lot of opportunities for learning and working with new things.

In my professional life I consult with companies to help them build & maintain managed IT services, specifically around Microsoft Windows server and client environments.  It’s a lot of fun, and both large and small clients have unique requirements, technology, and cultures.

On the personal side though, I use a completely different set of technologies.  Every year it seems to morph, usually little bits at a time.  For example, we all have a desktop or laptop that lasts us for years, maybe a printer, WiFi, storage systems, and entertainment of course.  Me too, though the end of this year seems to have taken a bit of a turn for me.

It will be no secret that I’m a heavy Microsoft user, and that I’m also a big consumer of Google services.  During this past year, I’ve found myself almost completely using online services rather than local software.  I do have an Office 365 account for myself, and having Office 2013 is great, but it’s the online portion of that subscription that makes it really usable.

Google Docs is another service I have begun to use much, much more, to the point of rarely actually using MS Office for personal use.  I use Office for work all the time, of course.  Along with Google Docs and Office 365, I use Evernote rather than OneNote, self-hosted WordPress for blogging, all the usual social networks, of course, and several other services as they fit unique needs.

What this means, is that I really don’t need MS Windows for personal use any more.  So here at the end of 2013, I’m changing the computing tools that I use.  Much of this isn’t a surprise, a Nexus 7 (2013, 16GB, WiFi) for a tablet, and a Nexus 5 for phone.  I still have my 3-year-old Sony laptop, but that dual-boots Ubuntu 13.10 and Windows 8.1 (spending most of the time in Ubuntu).  The big change was picking up the Chromebook 11, built by HP and Google.

I’ve been leaning towards a Chromebook for a year or more, but this one checked all the boxes for me.  Small, lightweight, instant on, USB charging (very cool), a great keyboard, very good display (even though resolution is only 1366×768), and stylish.  I can literally do about 99% of what I need from a computer from this Chromebook.  The only thing I can’t is video editing, and that’s mighty rare for me anyway.

The interesting coincidence, is that all three of these new devices have only 16GB of local storage and, of course, rely very heavily on the cloud to function.  For where I live & work, that’s not an issue, so I’ve found a significant boost in personal productivity by having devices that are instantly available, have the same synchronized information a click away, and are in some cases interchangeable. A study source – http://progamerreview.com/ has proven valuable to me, with so much tech advancement it helps to keep up with the professionals.

So for the next year or more, I’ll be mainly using Google hardware and, for heavy lifting, Ubuntu on my “big” laptop.  As I said earlier, I’ve been heading in this direction for some time.  Now that I’ve moved fully over, I feel more empowered to actually *do* things with the technology I own, rather than having to manage the technology… which is what I do in my professional life.

At least this makes things a little simpler.