That said, moving my data and preferences and everything to the replacement box (and having to delete them afterwards, so nobody gets into them) is too much work. I'd rather have a spare laptop/desktop myself ready to go when the need arises.
As professional programmers, spending like $2-4K for 2 laptops every 4 years or so isn't that much to ask (which we can also reduce from taxes AND sell afterwards).
Heck, if we owned a taxi, we'd spend far more on its maintenance and operating expenses for the same period, and make far less.
