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Comment by keithpeter | Hacker News Reader

This Professor/Programmer uses a 6 year old laptop at work and a consumer laptop at home. Just what do you actually need to get work done these days if you are not compiling 100k lines of source code?

I'm thinking of dumping the desktops and going for a single laptop.

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Why pay the extra cost for a laptop if you are always going to use it in one place?

so you don't have to be in the same place.

If you are talking about replacing a desktop it seems to imply stationary.

Er, yes, should have said 'replacing a desktop and a small netbook used for presentations'. I was after views on proper laptop only.

I suspect 'at work' might include schlepping down to the lecture hall and plugging into the projector now and again. Or popping over to the Library to make notes. Or sitting in a faculty meeting to take the minutes.

To directly answer your point: portability within the building/location.

Most schools have dedicated setups for classroom presentations. I think jgm is at stanford, I imagine stanford has the cash and competency for a decent classroom setup.

Running Linux? Excellent. The PCs in my classrooms all run Windows and are fairly heavily locked down so I just swap the VGA leads.

In addition to portability for when you do need/want it, like others mentioned, just plain saving space. If I didn't still want to play the occasional game of Civ V with high graphics settings, I'd love to ditch the tower that sits next to my desk at home.

He does have linodes and s3.

i have his very same setup. Just replace the s3 with a desktop, xmonad with ion3 (i know), and the mac book with a T40.

Also I thankfully do not use latex too much.

Dude, ion3!? That hurts ;)

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