I have always believed in downsizing my gear: not just my photo gear but also my electronic gear. As a techie,  I tend to collect a lot of electronics, from mobile phones to computers. There was a point in my life that I collected so much gadgets, I couldn’t decide which one to use. Those days are over, and now I try to limit my gadgets to those that I actually need.

Six months ago, I made the hard decision of letting go of my Asus laptop because:

• I was using my netbook more.
• I wasn’t doing any heavy computing at home anymore.
• It’s more practical to bring my netbook with me( in terms of weight and battery life : netbook=9hours vs laptop 2hours).
• The Asus laptop is getting old, and cheap and I’ll just lose more money if I sell it at a later time.

It may sound counter-productive, trading a full size laptop to a netbook, but it’s not. For my needs, the netbook was more than enough. The fact that I don’t have a big powerful laptop also made one “habit” of mine disappear: the habit of taking my work everywhere, including my home. Ever since I removed the option of doing work at home, I got back a lot of quality time. Continue reading »