For Christmas a few years ago, I bought the family new computers - my wife and I got Dell laptops and the kids got a big Dell All-In-One touchscreen. Fast forward to Fall 2012 and the motherboard on the Dell All-In-One got fried. The kids went without a computer for a while, but then slowly they started borrowing our laptops.
I was running through some scenarios in my head - should I buy the kids a new computer? Give them my laptop and get myself a Mac mini? But the more I thought about it, I wondered if I even needed a computer at all.
I think there are 2 ways you use a computer - business and personal. And I think those 2 activities are very different. My computer at work I use for business. My computer at home I use for personal... or do I? After evaluating my own computer use, I realized that 9 times out of 10 I went for my phone for personal computer activities - Facebook, Twitter, Email, eBay, etc. So do I need a full blown computer for personal activities? There were only 2 scenarios I could come up with where I needed a computer - making family videos and remoting into my work computer.
Since our house will still have 2 computers it will be easy for me to take this challenge, but I'm going to see if I can go computerless except for those few cases.
There are pros and cons of doing everything on your phone. First, I feel a great sense of freedom... I'm pretty much carrying around my personal computer with me everywhere I go. I no longer have to wait for my computer to start up and then I have to login - I've got my computer in my hand. Obviously some big down falls are a small screen and hard typing. The first I can't do much about but the second maybe I can.
Just how fast can you type on an iPhone? I went over to iPhoneTypingTest.com and found out I could reasonably get 50-60 words per minute. I think I do about 90-100 on a computer.
I also ordered a bluetooth keyboard off Amazon for longer typing sessions - blog posts, email.
I'm using my phone the majority of the time anyways, why not try to use it all the time? And again, I think there's a big difference between personal computer activities and business - I could never get any real work done an iPhone efficiently. I also would probably much prefer an iPad for the bigger screen - which is interesting because this is the first time I really had found a real use for having an iPad. Since money is a factor, I probably won't buy an iPad right now. But I do think its interesting and liberating - going computerless.