Why not just Tele-commute back home for the day. I do this on a daily basis with very usable results using RDP over an SSH tunnel.
If you're working for yourself this is actually the safest way to ensure your data is secure as it doesn't leave you home. I encrypt the critical stuff as well just to be sure.
Like I tell all my customers. Anything is possible if you're prepared to pay the premium.
If you've looked at a middle to high end business intelligence reporting server this can give equivalent ad-hoc reporting access without directly accessing the backend database. You may need to explain to all stakeholders that you need a form of middleware to manage what data is seen by users of various levels of permission.
One that springs to mind is JasperSoft's Jasper Server (http://www.jaspersoft.com), which I have seen their commercial version can offer Ad Hoc reporting via a nice Web 2.0/drag-drop interface.
I'm sure other Business Intelligence tools can do the same - JasperSoft is just one that I know and use.
Take that concept a step further and use TrueCrypt to encrypt a second partition using the dual password feature. But the real password decrypts a virtual machine - so the host OS becomes your decoy and EVERYTHING that you don't want seen goes into the encrypted virtual machine.
I have tried this out on a low-end dual core and works a treat - similar performance to a regular virtual machine.
For me I see ultra-portable, low power consumption, low cost and almost disposable as being ideal candidates for a mobile dumb terminal.
Seriously, for a home user unless you're gaming or video editing how many computers do you need? For most the answer is one with enough grunt to run a virtual machine for each user. From there is just a question of connecting people to it.
My wife does photo editing with some pretty big images, while at the same time I'm a developer with a VM running MySQL, MS-SQL, IIS and Apache. We each connect to our dedicated VM using RDP on a laptop networked with wifi and if I'm going to sit in one place for more than 30 minutes I plug in a 22" external monitor, USB mouse/keyboard and the laptop just sits next to me. I must admit my wife grumbles a little about the refresh rates, but mostly its quicker than using a medium to high end laptop that would cost quite a bit more.
I don't know about other countries but the price of HSDPA in Australia is actually becoming affordable, with telcos like Three ahref=http://www.three.com.au/rel=url2html-4832http://www.three.com.au/> offering 2GB of data for $29/month. Plug that into a eeePC and SSH tunnel or VPN to your home server (Linux for me) and hey preso, you've now got the performance of your desktop with all the redundancy and backups that you should have at home.
While I'm on my high horse I should also mention the green benefits of extending the life of old laptops using this setup...
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Why not just Tele-commute back home for the day. I do this on a daily basis with very usable results using RDP over an SSH tunnel.
If you're working for yourself this is actually the safest way to ensure your data is secure as it doesn't leave you home. I encrypt the critical stuff as well just to be sure.
Like I tell all my customers. Anything is possible if you're prepared to pay the premium.
If you've looked at a middle to high end business intelligence reporting server this can give equivalent ad-hoc reporting access without directly accessing the backend database. You may need to explain to all stakeholders that you need a form of middleware to manage what data is seen by users of various levels of permission.
One that springs to mind is JasperSoft's Jasper Server (http://www.jaspersoft.com), which I have seen their commercial version can offer Ad Hoc reporting via a nice Web 2.0/drag-drop interface.
I'm sure other Business Intelligence tools can do the same - JasperSoft is just one that I know and use.
Take that concept a step further and use TrueCrypt to encrypt a second partition using the dual password feature. But the real password decrypts a virtual machine - so the host OS becomes your decoy and EVERYTHING that you don't want seen goes into the encrypted virtual machine.
I have tried this out on a low-end dual core and works a treat - similar performance to a regular virtual machine.
For me I see ultra-portable, low power consumption, low cost and almost disposable as being ideal candidates for a mobile dumb terminal.
Seriously, for a home user unless you're gaming or video editing how many computers do you need? For most the answer is one with enough grunt to run a virtual machine for each user. From there is just a question of connecting people to it.
My wife does photo editing with some pretty big images, while at the same time I'm a developer with a VM running MySQL, MS-SQL, IIS and Apache. We each connect to our dedicated VM using RDP on a laptop networked with wifi and if I'm going to sit in one place for more than 30 minutes I plug in a 22" external monitor, USB mouse/keyboard and the laptop just sits next to me. I must admit my wife grumbles a little about the refresh rates, but mostly its quicker than using a medium to high end laptop that would cost quite a bit more.
I don't know about other countries but the price of HSDPA in Australia is actually becoming affordable, with telcos like Three ahref=http://www.three.com.au/rel=url2html-4832http://www.three.com.au/> offering 2GB of data for $29/month. Plug that into a eeePC and SSH tunnel or VPN to your home server (Linux for me) and hey preso, you've now got the performance of your desktop with all the redundancy and backups that you should have at home.
While I'm on my high horse I should also mention the green benefits of extending the life of old laptops using this setup...