Doing the Laptop Thing

Published 27 April 05 by Justin French, 25 comments

Aside from a cheap PC laptop I use for browser testing, I’ve had a single computer to work from as long as I can remember. I’ve been working from a home office since 1997, so it’s very much an integral part of both my work and home life, and the thought of having bits and pieces of my life scattered across two separate machines isn’t all that appealing.

So, I’ve been considering a few options…

Powerbook only

One option would be to retire the G4 Tower and just use the Powerbook for everything, and plug in a DKM (Display, Keyboard and Mouse) whenever I’m at home. I get the feeling this is what most of “us” are doing these days.

Unfortunately I’ve become addicted to my 2×17” LCD screen set-up (it’s really really helped my productivity), and moving to a Powerbook only would mean that I’m back down to one 1280×1024 screen, rendering one of my near-new LCDs and my perfectly good G4 Tower useless.

And let’s not forget that apart from processor speed, the 1Ghz Tower has more of everything (more disk space, faster hard drives, more ports, probably more RAM, etc).

I’m also concerned that leaving the Powerbook almost permanently plugged into mains power (I’m going to be at my desk much much more than I’ll be mobile) might damage or reduce the life of the battery, rendering it near useless when I finally get away from the desk.

Getting a 23” Cinema Display would certainly claim back a lot of the lost pixels (I’d have 2.3 million pixels on a 23” Cinema, compared to my current 2.6 million on the 2×17” LCDs or 1.3 million on a single 17” LCD), but then I’d have two useless, brand new 17” LCDs!

Is there any way to hook up more than one display to a Powerbook?

Syncing Everything

In an ideal world, I’d love to just have my Powerbook and Tower in perfect sync. I just pick the right tool for the job, do a quick sync with iSync/pSyncX/whatever, and get to work.

Is this possible?

I mean, I’m talking about mirroring my entire User folder, Apache configs, hosts file, Keychain, Applications, System Preferences – absolutely everything!

I’m expecting the answer is “no”, or at the very least not to the extent I’m dreaming of, but maybe someone much smarter than I will chime in with some ideas.

Sync what I can, and deal with it

Maybe I can’t get a perfect mirrored system on both bits of hardware, but maybe with a few tricks and tips from my readers, I can sync enough of it to keep me happy?

So, if you’re in a similar situation to me, what do you suggest?