3 ms·

A couple of ideas that don't exactly fit your question but might be relevant to others in a similar position: - You could buy a more portable laptop that you w

by davmre 11y ago

A couple of ideas that don't exactly fit your question but might be relevant to others in a similar position: - You could buy a more portable laptop that you wouldn't mind carrying around, for example the new Macbook Retina or an MS Surface. - Even a poor Internet connection might still be good enough for command-line work, and you can get a lot done on the command line. I've had great success keeping all my code and data on a central server, and editing code either directly in command-line Emacs via mosh (https://mosh.mit.edu https://mosh.mit.edu) or in a local Emacs instance using tramp (http://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/ http://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/) to save changes directly to the server. This has the advantage that I can start long-running jobs that persist on the server even as I'm moving between locations. For data science work, iPython notebook is also very easy to set up for remote web access.

lgbr 11y ago
> You could buy a more portable laptop that you wouldn't mind carrying around, for example the new Macbook Retina or an MS Surface. Here I think you're setting yourself up for failure. What happens when said laptop is stolen, has a hard drive die, or you forget your encryption key? If it's more convenient for him to have multiple workstations, then why not also make sure he maintains a good practice of having his working data synchronized and therefore backed up?
- davmre 11y ago
  Sure, everyone using a laptop (or desktop!) should run regular backups. I think that's mostly orthogonal to the portability solutions being discussed here, though. For example, the VM-on-a-USB-stick solution would also require a separate backup mechanism.
rsto 11y ago
TBH: I ask this already owning a MacBook Air 11" :) It's not the weight that bothers me. Cycling with a backpack in summer is sweaty. Carrying it with me when going out after work is both a hassle and a recipe for disaster (I almost forgot my laptop twice in a bar and wasn't even drunk - just distracted). I work as much as I can on the command line but I have to use some visualisation tools. They are part of the problem: they take time to set up, require constant configuration tweaking and I see myself wasting hours keeping them in sync on my workstations.

by davmre 11y ago

lgbr 11y ago

> You could buy a more portable laptop that you wouldn't mind carrying around, for example the new Macbook Retina or an MS Surface. Here I think you're setting yourself up for failure. What happens when said laptop is stolen, has a hard drive die, or you forget your encryption key? If it's more convenient for him to have multiple workstations, then why not also make sure he maintains a good practice of having his working data synchronized and therefore backed up?

davmre 11y ago
Sure, everyone using a laptop (or desktop!) should run regular backups. I think that's mostly orthogonal to the portability solutions being discussed here, though. For example, the VM-on-a-USB-stick solution would also require a separate backup mechanism.

rsto 11y ago

TBH: I ask this already owning a MacBook Air 11" :) It's not the weight that bothers me. Cycling with a backpack in summer is sweaty. Carrying it with me when going out after work is both a hassle and a recipe for disaster (I almost forgot my laptop twice in a bar and wasn't even drunk - just distracted). I work as much as I can on the command line but I have to use some visualisation tools. They are part of the problem: they take time to set up, require constant configuration tweaking and I see myself wasting hours keeping them in sync on my workstations.