As far as the "use of an external hard drive" goes...the poster who talked about using external storage for video editing was using ESATA via PC-card, not USB or Firewire. ESATA is just as good as an internal drive, it's connected at exactly the same speed. Of course, you aren't going to find enough PC-card slots in a laptop to install 4x ESATA ports to replicate your RAID, but the ESATA option does solve the bandwidth issue you mention, assuming a single 3.5" 10,000RPM drive is fast enough and large enough for what you're doing.
Most of the posters describing the choice between desktops and laptops seem to be making the false assumption that users have a choice between the two.
I don't really think that's the case anymore. I need to be able to take my computer with me...it's not every day, not every week even...usually my laptop sits on my desk and gets used as if it were a desktop, but when I need to take it along, there's no alternative.
The choice I face is not "do I want to spend $200 extra for a laptop", but rather, "do I want to spend $300 (minimum) extra for a desktop?"
The answer is no, I don't. A desktop computer is one peripheral I can't afford.
Isn't the point much more that by posting these email addresses here, and encouraging slashdotters to spread them, they may be placed on a large number of *other* sites which will result in the spambots finding them?
Of course, the decision to participate will likely hinge on whether your response to this news was "Oh no! The sky is falling!" or "Cool...if the sky falls, maybe they'll finally upgrade to sky 2.0."
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As far as the "use of an external hard drive" goes...the poster who talked about using external storage for video editing was using ESATA via PC-card, not USB or Firewire. ESATA is just as good as an internal drive, it's connected at exactly the same speed. Of course, you aren't going to find enough PC-card slots in a laptop to install 4x ESATA ports to replicate your RAID, but the ESATA option does solve the bandwidth issue you mention, assuming a single 3.5" 10,000RPM drive is fast enough and large enough for what you're doing.
Most of the posters describing the choice between desktops and laptops seem to be making the false assumption that users have a choice between the two. I don't really think that's the case anymore. I need to be able to take my computer with me...it's not every day, not every week even...usually my laptop sits on my desk and gets used as if it were a desktop, but when I need to take it along, there's no alternative. The choice I face is not "do I want to spend $200 extra for a laptop", but rather, "do I want to spend $300 (minimum) extra for a desktop?" The answer is no, I don't. A desktop computer is one peripheral I can't afford.
Isn't the point much more that by posting these email addresses here, and encouraging slashdotters to spread them, they may be placed on a large number of *other* sites which will result in the spambots finding them?
Of course, the decision to participate will likely hinge on whether your response to this news was "Oh no! The sky is falling!" or "Cool...if the sky falls, maybe they'll finally upgrade to sky 2.0."