I’ve been using a notebook computer as my primary desktop for nearly all of the past 33 years. Currently, that computer is a MacBook Air. I am occasionally surprised to learn this is somehow unusual.
On weekdays, I use the MaBook on my desk with an attached ultrawide 34" display and Bluetooth keyboard and trackball. During those times, it’s just like any desktop computer — like an iMac or Mac Studio or Mac Mini.
I undock the MacBook and take it with me for business trips, local meetings, and also on weekends, when I sit on the daybed in the sunroom and putter with the Macbook on my lap (in which condition I typed this note yesterday).
I have one external disk, for a Time Machine backup. And yes I unmount the disk every time I pick up the MacBook and take it away from my desk. Even though that process only takes 30 seconds most of the time, I found it annoying to just stare at the screen and wait for the eject to finish. So I found an AppleScript on the Internet that unmounts attached disks, and then configured Keyboard Maestro to run the AppleScript from my iPhone. So I can be standing in my kitchen or wherever, activate the Keyboard Maestro action from my iPhone, and by the time I get to my home office, the external disk is unmounted and the MacBook is ready to unplug and take with me wherever I’m going.
Is the TM drive an HDD or an SSD? I’ve found that the latter dismounts orders of magnitude faster than the former.
I started with the first Apple portable in 1990. At some point in mid 90’s, I was lugging around an Apple Power Mac G4 … until its hard drive did a hard crash. I’ve been through iterations of MBP computers since around 2000. As an instructor in higher ed, the distinct advantage of being able to take everything you need directly to a classroom lecture and plug into a projector is not to be understated (let alone also thereby avoiding internet upload/download time as well as Windows apps). The ability to run good quality second monitors or to sit at the sofa with the computer in my lab makes the flexibility so much better.
So, your approach is unusual perhaps only because your work needs are not of the ordinary “only use a computer while sitting at a specific desk”.
One of my clients is an insurance agent and he works from home a lot, but he also has an office. He also needs to take his system with him to clients for presentations.
I’ve recommended he get a business class laptop and a couple of Thunderbolt docks. In my experience, USB-C docks aren’t reliable enough.
One environment everywhere; the cognitive load is a lot less.
I’ve been using a laptop for around 30 years now - Windows PCs until 2006, then a MacBook ever since, apart from a period between 2015 and 2020 when I went iPad-only due to ongoing keyboard reliability issues.
Throughout that time I’ve been a church pastor and have never felt the need for an external monitor. Part of the reason is that I’ve never had a fixed desk or a dedicated monitor; I hot-desk between the church building, home, and cafés. That works for me largely because I don’t use spreadsheets. My work is mostly text creation, Safari, and email.
In the last few years I’ve also discovered Perlego, which allowed me to get rid of around a thousand physical books.
My eyesight isn’t great, but somehow a 13-inch MacBook Air remains just about perfect for me.
HDD = spinning drive and SDD = Solid state? I’m pretty sure it’s an HDD though it is also old so I’m not 100% sure.
Exactly why I switched to laptops in the early 1990s; I was tired of having to remember to download my working documents every time I went on a business trip.
That’s similar to my history. I switched to a DOS notebook in about 1993, then upgraded to Windows 95 and transitioned to Apple because I was hearing nothing good about Windows Vista and I figured if I was going to switch operating systems I might as well switch to something people like. Also, I was intrigued by Quicksilver (and I still rely on a launcher today — Raycast). I used iMacs in 2009 and 2010 then switched to a Macbook in 2011 and I have been Macbook-only since.
I was a devoted iPad user 2010-2022 or 2023 or so, but now I find I use it less and less and if my iPad went kaput on me today I don’t know whether I would replace it.
I really, really liked Windows XP. If Microsoft had continued along that path, I … well, I possibly would not be here now.
Are you implying that a “fast” SSD is needed or desired for TM backups? I would think that any SSD such as a budget-friendly slower one and not the latest faster SSD would be appropriate for TM backups. Incremental TM backups are done once per hour, and I have never noticed any issue even with a HDD that is much slower than any SSD.
Maybe I’m reading too much into your comment - you did say “appropriately specified”, not “fast”.
Appropriate size - General recommendations are to use a TM drive at least 2x or above in GB compared to the total contents that should be backed up routinely. One way to meet this spec on a budget is simply to buy a drive at 2x or above on the size of your internal storage.
Appropriate speed - The bottleneck in speed is the slowest in the sequence internal storage ↔ bus ↔ connecter ↔ cable ↔ drive. Any HDD, even the most advanced, is typically the slowest read/write in all cases. By comparison, with some older computers, some SSDs can be faster than the connector to the computer (which is otherwise generally the next slowest in the list). One way to meet this spec on a budget is to buy a drive with no more transfer speed than the connector to the computer (e.g. USB-C or thunderbolt).
In summary, when shopping for an external SSD solely for TM backups, the SSD should be at least 2x over your internal storage size, and it does not have to be any faster than your connector transfer rate.
In summary, when shopping for an external SSD solely for TM backups, the SSD should be at least 2x over your internal storage size, and it does not have to be any faster than your connector transfer rate.