Careful with #2. I hosed my old PowerBook G4’s battery by leaving it plugged in at my desk for days at a stretch. At the time I didn’t have any real need to go portable, but when I later did I discovered that my battery petered out after about a half hour.

So if you do start using your laptop as a very small desktop, remember to give the battery some exercise every so often.

Big fan of number 2. I have a large number of peripheral devices hooked up at home and at work, all to the same MacBook Pro, which itself rests on a nice glassy iCurve: an external monitor and external storagemic, mouse, keyboard and more, connected with a single USB plug to the laptop using a fairly big USB hub. Having a power brick at both locations is good idea as wel, so you only have to put the laptop down and connect a few wires. The result is an ultra portable yet highly comfortable workspace. And the bonus is: having to disconnect the laptop is just a little bit too much of a hassle to take it with you to the bathroom.

Or #6 Get an iPhone ;)

these are great tips. i love it. and i certainly find the tips useful. i’m going to put them all to good use and free myself from the tyrannical shackles of my laptop. good thing there’s the iphone.

I have found that I can’t seem to put the stupid laptop down either but a hack that seems to work for me is to un plug the laptop and run it with battery only… this gives me between 3-4 hrs depending and when it dies I plug it back in and leave it … like a built in timer :)

Hrm, not to be Cap’n Contrary here but it seems like most of those are saying “pretend you have a desktop”. Which is to say, ignore any of the advantages of the laptop by nailing it into your desk. The curfew is not bad, but would be impractical for someone like me; dennishay’s battery trick is a good one fer sure. But ideally you want to divorce the (unnecessary) things you are using the laptop for, not the laptop itself. For me that was feeling like I had to check a million feeds every 10 minutes.

Which is not to say I don’t bring it everywhere. I am addicted to potentially using a laptop. So not like I should be giivng advice here.

I still don’t think these workarounds make a real solution. If the problem is that you’re compulsive about using your laptop, I think you won’t be helped by depriving yourself of it part of the time. You might smoke less because of smoke-free buildings, but that doesn’t solve the real problem, which is that you’re addicted to cigarettes.

I think the best thing is to cultivate good usage habits — Take facebook out of your daily bookmarks. Leave your email program closed. Hide the dock so your programs don’t tempt you. Stow your files someplace you can’t see them until you start to think about wanting them. Use SpiritedAway. Above all, open your laptop and do what you wanted to do and close it.

Minuteur is a great little MAC OSX egg timer. I’ve ben using it for a few months and find it REALLY helps to notify me when I’ve been spending too much quality time with the laptop.

Give it a try.

-Dave

My only machine has been a Macbook Pro for almost 2 years now. I just upgraded to the Mac pro and haven’t looked back. The Macbook Pro sits on my desk and hardly ever gets used unless I travel. Being able to shut the monitor off, shut the mouse and keyboard off, makes it a pain in the butt to sit down just to do a little browsing. I get much more done now.