The single biggest factor in me shelling out for a UMPC so early was this: I can't use a conventional PC for any length of time without causing pain in my upper back. But I still do it even though the pain will be horrible later. Stupid, but so much of my life depends on a PC that I can't really get by without it.
Enter origami, and it's working: not to wean me off the internet but to detach it from a hunched over, sedentary lifestyle.
Today, for example was a beautiful day in London so me and my girlfriend spent the day on the balcony, listening to my favourite radio show on the Q1. Very nice in itself but we then decided to see a movie in the evening.
Pre-umpc this would have involved me going inside, sitting down at my desk, looking up film times and then getting sucked into something else: an hour later and I'll have stored up enough pain to spoil the movie later.
But now I don't have to go to information, information is just there with me – and I can move past the while-I'm-here mentality that welds me to my desk and thence to painkillers. So our film research took only a couple of minutes and we were soon back to relaxing.
Brick, by the way, is a wonderful movie!
