

Ask HN: How do I stop obsessing about taking care of my hardware (laptop)? - grover_hartmann

It seems to get in the way of productivity, and it has become an obsession for me to extremely take care of it.<p>How do I beat this obsesssion? I have OCD.<p>It&#x27;s also my only laptop.
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lsiunsuex
Change how you think about your laptop.

If you think about it as a luxury item or or something that is fragile, you'll
always be OCD about it. Perhaps because it is your only laptop, your more
careful with it.

If tomorrow, it fell down a flight of stairs and you had to replace it, could
you on the spot? How long would it take otherwise? How much work would you
loose if it happened?

I was this way a long time ago and probably to a certain point, still am with
my primary laptop / phone. To me, they're just tools now to get the job done.
A couple months ago, my laptop died and fortunately, I was in a position where
the only thing stopping me from getting a new one was a 20 minute drive to the
Apple Store. That's not to say that I'm careless with my laptop, but it's just
a tool, and tools break.

I remember breaking my fathers Snap On Ratchet once. Fortunately, they're
tools are warranted for life, but it was just a tool easily replaceable.

"The things you own, end up owning you"

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totoroisalive
I always buy protective gear for my equipment and extend the warranty, for my
laptop I bought a protector case, screen protector, keyboard cover and
stickers I like (no protection just fun). After all of that I stop worrying
about it, I clean once a week because I hate dirty equipment but if something
happens that's just life.

You have to keep tools in good shape, but tools are for work.

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mrcold
I used to do this too. But after a couple laptops and smartphones just died on
me, I realized that everything truly is designed to fail. Every product now
has a limited life, no matter how well you care for it. So use it delicately
or throw it on your desk every day. It's still going to die when you least
expect it. And you will still need to buy a new one again.

Hardware is now a consumable. Works for a while and then it breaks down. You
don't buy it. You just rent it for a couple of years. So there is no need to
care for your laptop. You will have to get a new one anyway. It's just the
cost of doing business. You may not like it, but it's how things are now.

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therealidiot
Once you have an accident and get a scratch somewhere you generally start
feeling less protective, or at least that's how I am with my tech. I don't
stop caring altogether, though - I'm just less bothered about the not-so-
obvious cosmetics.

I'm not afraid to take my laptops apart these days. It's my hardware and I've
seen it naked.

Maybe it's about seeing "for yourself" that your machine isn't quite as
delicate as you had led yourself to believe? I don't even know :)

~~~
kohanz
My car would be an analogy for this. We used to live in a sketchy neighborhood
and one night our car got keyed by some kids. I was pretty upset and up-in-
arms about it for a while. Fixing it would be expensive (insurance covers it,
but still have to pay deductible), so we just decided to leave it. Once I got
over it, I found myself being much less stressed about the condition of the
car in general. As long as I'm keeping it, I'm fine it with it looking not new
and as long as its functional, superficial things don't bother me anymore. If
it comes time to sell the car, I'll get it fixed up.

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mod
Maybe think about moving to a cloud-based machine. My actual work environment
(I'm a developer) is up on a server. I ssh in and use the machine from
virtually any machine.

I can be ready to work in about 5 minutes on a brand new machine.

It's basically a screen and a keyboard for me, nothing more. Lessens its
importance.

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nlx
Get something sharp and put ugly scratches all over it

