Laptop and an expansion box questions??????

I live in two locations: Rhode Island & Texas. I intend to buy a high
powered laptop (probably Lenovo) so that all my apps are on one computer.
That way, I'll have the laptop at whichever location I'm at. My problem
is that I would like something like an expansion box so that I can use
and/or change some hardware (like a graphics card) when I choose. The
laptop is not conducive to this. If I did this, I'd have a duplicate
expansion box in both locations. I'm thinking: the best of both worlds:
I can have my PC while traveling - and not have to travel with a desktop.
Overall, I'm thinking this would be both practical and cheaper than a
desktop. Lenovo doesn't have what I want. Does my idea have merit? If
so, are there any limitations to what I can put in the expansion box and
be able to connect to it? Please give me some ideas. Thanks......

In article ,
wrote:
I live in two locations: Rhode Island & Texas. I intend to buy a high
powered laptop (probably Lenovo) so that all my apps are on one computer.
That way, I'll have the laptop at whichever location I'm at. My problem
is that I would like something like an expansion box so that I can use
and/or change some hardware (like a graphics card) when I choose. The
laptop is not conducive to this. If I did this, I'd have a duplicate
expansion box in both locations. I'm thinking: the best of both worlds:
I can have my PC while traveling - and not have to travel with a desktop.
Overall, I'm thinking this would be both practical and cheaper than a
desktop. Lenovo doesn't have what I want. Does my idea have merit? If
so, are there any limitations to what I can put in the expansion box and
be able to connect to it? Please give me some ideas. Thanks......


The best you can do is get s high-end laptop that has a docking
station as an option. Buy one for each location.

These used to be available with a slot for a card but it's been a long
time since I've shopped for a dock.

--
Al Dykes
News is something someone wants to suppress, everything else is advertising.
- Lord Northcliffe, publisher of the Daily Mail

wrote:
I live in two locations: Rhode Island & Texas.

Desktops are so cheap and flexible and so much better ergonomically,
that I would buy a desktop for each 'living' place and I would have my
laptop be relatively small.

It is a PITA paininthe*ss to lug around a big highpowered laptop, and it
is also very expensive compared to desktops and smaller laptops.

I intend to buy a high
powered laptop (probably Lenovo) so that all my apps are on one computer.

There are better ways to solve that problem. IMAP for email. Portable
apps.

That way, I'll have the laptop at whichever location I'm at.

The only thing good about a LT is its portability. Everything else is
bad, expense, lack of flexibility and ergonomics, heaviness.

Please give me some ideas. Thanks......


--
Mike Easter

wrote:
I live in two locations: Rhode Island & Texas. I intend to buy a high
powered laptop (probably Lenovo) so that all my apps are on one computer.
That way, I'll have the laptop at whichever location I'm at. My problem
is that I would like something like an expansion box so that I can use
and/or change some hardware (like a graphics card) when I choose. The
laptop is not conducive to this. If I did this, I'd have a duplicate
expansion box in both locations. I'm thinking: the best of both worlds:
I can have my PC while traveling - and not have to travel with a desktop.
Overall, I'm thinking this would be both practical and cheaper than a
desktop. Lenovo doesn't have what I want. Does my idea have merit? If
so, are there any limitations to what I can put in the expansion box and
be able to connect to it? Please give me some ideas. Thanks......

A laptop ExpressCard slot, has a single PCI Express lane on it. That
isn't enough bandwidth for connecting real high performance peripherals.
There are plenty of ordinary card functions that might work, such as
sound card, TV tuner, maybe a SATA or ESATA card. But gaming
video would be another matter.

You can see, that this company does make expansion products which
utilize ExpressCard. So the product exists, but it can be expensive.

http://magma.com/pciexpress.asp

The impact of that, on video performance, was documented on
Tomshardware years ago. The benchmarks here, give some idea
of the impact of using a "thin" expansion interconnect.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...is,1572-8.html

If the laptop had a "wider" bus for expansion purposes, it might
make sense.

You can buy laptops with pretty powerful graphics in them now,
but I wouldn't recommend such a thing, because the heat
levels from such devices, leads to a shorter laptop life.
And laptops are never cheap to repair. You wouldn't sit a
laptop like this in your lap, with a 100W GPU in it.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3790/c...-480m-shipping

For the amount of money involved, I might be tempted to use a
couple desktops. They're easier to repair or upgrade. (Build them
yourself, not to save money or anything, but to make them easier
to upgrade with standard components. Use a retail copy of Windows,
so you can move it from one motherboard to the next.) Then,
carry a netbook with you, something with long battery life, for
times when portability and long battery life is what you need.

Paul

Mike Easter wrote:

The only thing good about a LT is its portability. Everything else is
bad, expense, lack of flexibility and ergonomics, heaviness.

.... short battery life, heat generation, breakability...

Did I mention the ergonomics issues? Put that one down again, because
there are more than one ergo-issue.

You need a workstation anyway, for such as printer and scanner. The
same place you would put your 'dock' with a monitor and decent keyboard
and mouse, you could put a desktop with a tiny footprint - or none if it
were so small it could attach to the back of the monitor.

You could put sub-$300 desktops on each end and an economical small
laptop and spend about 1/3 as much as you would on a big expensive
laptop that is liable to break something and which you would quickly
tire of carrying if you travel a lot.

The serious roadwarriors don't carry heavy laptops.


--
Mike Easter

On 7/7/2010 2:19 PM, wrote:
I live in two locations: Rhode Island & Texas. I intend to buy a high
powered laptop (probably Lenovo) so that all my apps are on one computer.
That way, I'll have the laptop at whichever location I'm at. My problem
is that I would like something like an expansion box so that I can use
and/or change some hardware (like a graphics card) when I choose. The
laptop is not conducive to this. If I did this, I'd have a duplicate
expansion box in both locations. I'm thinking: the best of both worlds:
I can have my PC while traveling - and not have to travel with a desktop.
Overall, I'm thinking this would be both practical and cheaper than a
desktop. Lenovo doesn't have what I want. Does my idea have merit? If
so, are there any limitations to what I can put in the expansion box and
be able to connect to it? Please give me some ideas. Thanks......

Whatever you do don't try to use one of the USB connected
port expanders. They have insufficient band width to support
all you seem to want. The port expanders that plug into some
laptops do not have card slots anymore. You will have to get
one from whomever you get the laptop from as they are very
much device specific and you will find they require high end
laptops, usually work stations. Dell and Lenovo have them
but neither one has a card slot.

Thanks all for your comments. I would consider a desktop at each end -
but how do I move the hard drive from one to the other so that I'm always
current? Then there's the backup drive problem. A backup is a MUST!!!


On Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:19:43 -0400, wrote:

I live in two locations: Rhode Island & Texas. I intend to buy a high
powered laptop (probably Lenovo) so that all my apps are on one computer.
That way, I'll have the laptop at whichever location I'm at. My problem
is that I would like something like an expansion box so that I can use
and/or change some hardware (like a graphics card) when I choose. The
laptop is not conducive to this. If I did this, I'd have a duplicate
expansion box in both locations. I'm thinking: the best of both worlds:
I can have my PC while traveling - and not have to travel with a desktop.
Overall, I'm thinking this would be both practical and cheaper than a
desktop. Lenovo doesn't have what I want. Does my idea have merit? If
so, are there any limitations to what I can put in the expansion box and
be able to connect to it? Please give me some ideas. Thanks......

On 7/7/2010 7:29 PM, wrote:
Thanks all for your comments. I would consider a desktop at each end -
but how do I move the hard drive from one to the other so that I'm always
current? Then there's the backup drive problem. A backup is a MUST!!!


On Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:19:43 -0400, wrote:

I live in two locations: Rhode Island& Texas. I intend to buy a high
powered laptop (probably Lenovo) so that all my apps are on one computer.
That way, I'll have the laptop at whichever location I'm at. My problem
is that I would like something like an expansion box so that I can use
and/or change some hardware (like a graphics card) when I choose. The
laptop is not conducive to this. If I did this, I'd have a duplicate
expansion box in both locations. I'm thinking: the best of both worlds:
I can have my PC while traveling - and not have to travel with a desktop.
Overall, I'm thinking this would be both practical and cheaper than a
desktop. Lenovo doesn't have what I want. Does my idea have merit? If
so, are there any limitations to what I can put in the expansion box and
be able to connect to it? Please give me some ideas. Thanks......

1.5 and 2 Terabyte drives have come down in price lately. Many times in
the $89 price range or even less with a rebate. Take one of them and
either place it in an external USB or ESATA case. Those usually can be
had at the same place as the drive. If you only need to transfer half
that amount of data drives with USB cases are going for $59 or less.

Just be aware that if you fly anywhere in the USA that the Homeland
Security police claim to have the legal right to force you to give them
any and all passwords needed to access the data on the drive.

Another thought would be to use one of the Online storage methods like
Carbonite or Mozy. While I have not used either service both of them
sounds like promising options. Just be sure that PC's from both
locations would have total access to the stored data before signing up.

Below is a link to a review of both services, just ignore that the
review is on an Apple Blog as both services support Windows and Apple
operating systems.

http://theappleblog.com/2009/07/16/m...kup-smackdown/

Build 2 Desktops that are exactly the same..Mobo/RAM/Video/ Operating system
Use a Case that has removable HD bays...not necesary but it makes it easier
Set up one with OS and programs of your Choice.
Remove the HD and place it in the other Computer...since both have exactly
the same
hardware everything will function as if you were on the 1st computer.

So when your in Rhode Island doing work on your system you would remove the
HD
and when you go to Texas you would insert that HD into the Texas computer
and
you would be right where you left off in RI

peter



If you find a posting or message from me offensive,inappropriate or
disruptive,please ignore it. If you dont know how to ignore a posting
complain to me and I will be only too happy to demonstrate :-)
wrote in message ...

Thanks all for your comments. I would consider a desktop at each end -
but how do I move the hard drive from one to the other so that I'm always
current? Then there's the backup drive problem. A backup is a MUST!!!


On Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:19:43 -0400, wrote:

I live in two locations: Rhode Island & Texas. I intend to buy a high
powered laptop (probably Lenovo) so that all my apps are on one computer.
That way, I'll have the laptop at whichever location I'm at. My problem
is that I would like something like an expansion box so that I can use
and/or change some hardware (like a graphics card) when I choose. The
laptop is not conducive to this. If I did this, I'd have a duplicate
expansion box in both locations. I'm thinking: the best of both worlds:
I can have my PC while traveling - and not have to travel with a desktop.
Overall, I'm thinking this would be both practical and cheaper than a
desktop. Lenovo doesn't have what I want. Does my idea have merit? If
so, are there any limitations to what I can put in the expansion box and
be able to connect to it? Please give me some ideas. Thanks......

On Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:43:37 -0500, GlowingBlueMist
wrote:

On 7/7/2010 7:29 PM, wrote:
Thanks all for your comments. I would consider a desktop at each end -
but how do I move the hard drive from one to the other so that I'm always
current? Then there's the backup drive problem. A backup is a MUST!!!


On Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:19:43 -0400, wrote:

I live in two locations: Rhode Island& Texas. I intend to buy a high
powered laptop (probably Lenovo) so that all my apps are on one computer.
That way, I'll have the laptop at whichever location I'm at. My problem
is that I would like something like an expansion box so that I can use
and/or change some hardware (like a graphics card) when I choose. The
laptop is not conducive to this. If I did this, I'd have a duplicate
expansion box in both locations. I'm thinking: the best of both worlds:
I can have my PC while traveling - and not have to travel with a desktop.
Overall, I'm thinking this would be both practical and cheaper than a
desktop. Lenovo doesn't have what I want. Does my idea have merit? If
so, are there any limitations to what I can put in the expansion box and
be able to connect to it? Please give me some ideas. Thanks......

1.5 and 2 Terabyte drives have come down in price lately. Many times in
the $89 price range or even less with a rebate. Take one of them and
either place it in an external USB or ESATA case. Those usually can be
had at the same place as the drive. If you only need to transfer half
that amount of data drives with USB cases are going for $59 or less.

Just be aware that if you fly anywhere in the USA that the Homeland
Security police claim to have the legal right to force you to give them
any and all passwords needed to access the data on the drive.

Another thought would be to use one of the Online storage methods like
Carbonite or Mozy. While I have not used either service both of them
sounds like promising options. Just be sure that PC's from both
locations would have total access to the stored data before signing up.

Below is a link to a review of both services, just ignore that the
review is on an Apple Blog as both services support Windows and Apple
operating systems.

http://theappleblog.com/2009/07/16/m...kup-smackdown/

Thanks. Should I have two backup storage drives - one at each location -
or travel with one?