Hi Peter,
>I think your advice to backup things is okay. But why call what I suggested 'the wrong approach'?? Paying a bit more for a lower rate of failures (of all kinds) is not a wrong approach. It is a choice.

Two points:
I was half arguing from a fixed budget assumption, and here I'ld go for laptop and disk (and large extra keyboard and especially a Logitech optical mouse - one of my stronger addictions in the last years). As this was not mentioned, ok, if there is money enough...

My second point is that programming road warriors tend to "centralize" too much on their laptops. This in itself creates a liability that especially "service plans" cannot heal (they are a symptom of it <bg>). I try to establish a redundant HW setting, and use my "pure" laptop only in meetings and sometimes at night if I have to stay in a hotel. That is usually less than 20% of total usage, therefore "quality" of keyboard is not an issue with me. For the other times I usually get at least my own desk for a few weeks or months - there I put one of my spare keyboards, a mousee and a second tube screen of mine if I am not given one. Sometimes I bring a spare desktop machine or work from my laptop, always having a USB backup of the work done there (or if working at home have a backup on the machine there when I carry it on the USB disk). VFP makes it especially easy to move whole projects - in other languages I have more effort, but I think it is worth it. We had a project with over 20 externals working day and night off their laptops: usually at least 2 HW problems per month and the resulting slow down for one or to coworkers (I need your...) - usually simple stuff like broken off LAN ports or power connection troubles, sometimes HD or virus problems. In 4 years I had 3 mishaps, and after the first it never slowed me down again <g>. You might get the same security with a rigorous backup scheme to DVD-RW, but it is faster and thereby less painful to save to disk.

I'ld rather have two cheap machines than one expensive one - which makes buying the more expensive one often "wrong" for my taste.

my 0.02 EUR

thomas