I've been going laptops-only for several years now. They're nice in a lot of ways - small form factor, simplicity - but also a bit frustrating because I inevita

I've been going laptops-only for several years now. They're nice in a lot of ways - small form factor, simplicity - but also a bit frustrating because I inevitably take them out somewhere, get them a little bit bashed up, and eventually start seeing intermittent video issues, DVD drive failure, etc. That is, the "wear+tear" factor is going to be higher simply because I allow it to be. Recently I had a change in direction and stopped taking my laptops out unless it was for a specific trip. Instead, I enjoy myself when I'm out. If I get a cool idea, I have a little pocket notebook to write the idea in. (I might start taking a netbook along someday, but at present the netbook that I have - EEE900 - is just too underpowered for the work I'm doing. So it's a web-browsing box only, which I don't need for work. I think I need to get rid of that thing altogether.) So instead, I focused on improving the home environment. I got a monitor(HP2009M 20") a few weeks ago and added a USB keyboard and trackball and figured that I would have a dual-monitor setup with that and the laptop monitor. Except that it hasn't worked out that way; Win7 makes it pretty easy to tile things two or three across if necessary with the Win+(Arrow key) shortcuts and the 20" has ample resolution for that. And my work style has transitioned towards "one thing at a time, no distractions." I haven't used an IM client in months. IRC rarely. So the laptop screen sits empty most of the time, like right now, and I have unused space on the main monitor too! (That would change quickly if I were to go back to having stuff I check impulsively every two seconds again, but it's probably better not to...) The main improvement to what I have, I guess, would simply be a more powerful box, possibly with multiple drives so I can keep clean, separate OS installs without even having to dig into partitioning...which leads me towards thinking about a desktop again...