Todd;

Just a comment about the value of a Laptop:

During the last seven years, every time I have had an opportunity for a consulting job or full time employment, I have brought my Laptop to give demos of some of the applications I have created. In virtually every case I have been successful 100% of the time I have done this. My first Laptop 7 years ago cost $5000. 75 Mhz CPU, etc. It ran VFP 5.0 and still works! The active matrix screen allows the screen to be viewed from any frontal angle – great for demos! When you choose a Laptop the screen is very important!

I promised myself that I would use my Laptops only for demos. I ended up doing a great deal of development on them. A network card to the outside world makes data transfer seamless.

Tom


>My laptop is starting to show it's age. Time for a replacement.
>
>90% of my work could be done on a desktop.
>5% of the time, I do need to go to a client and do some work. A laptop is invaluable for that.
>5% of the time, I want to sit in my underwear and read websites/my email on Sunday morning. A laptop is very nice for that.
>
>So while a laptop is not FREQUENTLY needed, it is IMPORTANT. But, looking at the price of laptops, I wonder if that's the way to go.
>
>I'm wondering about an External Harddrive? Could you have a desktop and a laptop with nothing but the OS on the local drive but all applications and data on the external? I'd then get a new desktop with the external harddrive. On the infrequent times I need to go to a clients, I take the laptop and the external drive with me. Both the laptop and desktop access the external drive.
>
>I could get a new desktop and backup my developlment to the laptop when going to a client, then put it all back when I return, but that seems to be a pain and prone to error.
>
>Any other ideas?