Reply to Backups and Redundancy (for professionals)

Hi Everyone,

I'm unfortunately very tough on electronics. I assume that a lot of these things break for reasons that are entirely my fault. I'm not entirely sure what behaviour causes this - I keep everything clean and covered with decksavers, invisible shields, and use common sense. (Some of you have seen my setup http://bit.ly/1adrar0 and pointed out that some of it's close to water, but that isn't what happened here).

I'm writing from my phone because my laptop (MacBook Pro, Retina, latest model, maximum options, latest OS, latest, legal copies of all software) absolutely died in the middle of a Traktor/turntablism routine on Thursday evening . Apple evidently needs five days to repair the thing, and now I'm an electronic artist without a computer for the immediate future.

Luckily, I have a smartphone, analog vinyl records and turntables, analog, brass trumpets, pen and paper, and analog, real-life friends.

Eventually, I still need to be able to run Traktpr, Maschine, and Reaktor, though. I have at least three backups of everything, some of which are bootable, several trumpets, multiple stable versions of both commercial software and my own, and duplicates of most of my gear, but none of that helps here.

So, what is the solution to THIS problem? My best response is to purchase a second laptop. I believe I'll wait until the next rMBP update to do so, and just keep my current one. Really, I can't believe of too many other options, seeing as I rely on software. I could do a gig on CDJs, or on vinyl (though it sort of sucks the fun of of a DVS if you're bringing all of your crates), or on Traktor DJ, but why about after the gig? Five or more days downtime is a huge deficit - it'll put me behind in school and work for sure, and I'm bound to miss a deadline.

Do you guys run multiple computers? What is your solution, not just for a gig, but for a week without your system?