Originally Posted by
tjspiel
It's not the syncing of documents (or source code in my case) that's the problem. It would be trying to maintain the exact same software configuration on multiple machines.
I'm a software developer and I work with a variety of tools including C, java, php, perl, postgres, and starting now - python. That stuff all comes with OS X but the included versions can be out of date, missing some features I need, or just a bad idea to mess with (postgres). So I end up installing my own versions. Further, things like perl and php have tons of available modules that make life easier that I also end up installing or in some cases building from source. I'm adding new modules all the time.
Further complicating things is that fact that I have linux, Windows XP, and Window 7 virtual machines. Their configurations get tweaked now and then too. Now, I have backups of all of it and if it was an emergency I could be up and running on another computer pretty quickly, but it's not the sort of thing I'd want to do just to get an hour or two of work done at home.
to each his own. a 5 GiB image takes less than 15min to transfer and install (i usually move single files of 10-20GiB nightly). in fact, upon leaving work, just tell the machine at home to image the one at work and it's ready when you arrive.
i just don't see the need to carry a machine around.
my gf is like you though, kinda old skool, and i refuse to bike with her machine on my back.
such is life, i guess.
i guess it also helps to identical hardware at home and at work (both even with Swedish keyboard).