Only the ones that matter.

I like the vhds suggestion, but that won’t work for my training class. I’ll need to be able to switch back and forth instantly. I will, however, try the vhds for all the other Office versions and operating systems used for testing.

Yep.

Re. no support for 2003…you may not support 2003 or earlier but in some ways 2003 will support you better than 2007. There are still some instances where 2007′s macro recorder generates no code but 2003 will. And, no, please don’t ask me for specifics. I don’t keep track of this kind of information.

Hope your knee gets better soon.

We may have talked about this before but have you considered Foldershare or its competitors? Foldershare is now Windows Live Sync after its acquisition by Microsoft. Rather than swap hard disks, or copying data via memory sticks, or sharing folders over a network, I have been using FS for some years now to sync files on multiple machines.

I think building your own desktop is a great idea. I don’t think I’ll ever stop doing that myself. Go for the Core i7s – It’s pretty much amazing. I brought home some work from the office once, and one operation (involving a not-very-efficient but had-to-be-done formula) that took 15 minutes on a Pentium Prescott 640 was done in 3 seconds on the i7 920.

When it’s time to get a new one I start watching what Staples has on sale. When a decently loaded HP laptop shows up with a good price, that’s what I get. Generally I pay around $700-800, which includes the 3 year extended service plan. One monitor replacement beyond the regular warranty pays for the plan.

Why Staples? I’ve bought computers there for over ten years, they’ve supported their stuff, and I’ve had good luck with their service techs. All I have to do is mutter a few choice phrases I’ve picked up from MSDN magazine (I don’t even need to understand what they mean), and they know enough to stop bullshitting me. Try that at Best Buy, when you’re done buying their gold-plated CAT-5 cable. I spend enough at Staples (desk chairs, external HDs, modems, UPSs, extra monitors, whatever) that I’m a premier customer. They make me feel the way I try to make my customers feel. (Do you want fries with that?)

Why HP? Why not? My first HP had Windows 98 on it, and it lasted ten years with hardly any issues. Two Compaq laptops were immersed in water when my daughter flooded the kitchen from the upstairs bath, and after two days under a high powered fan, both started right up, and both are still in use (they predate my consulting career, so they’re over six years old).

I stick with what I know and what works. YMMV.

Good luck with the knee, in a past life I did research on knees and cartilage – seems a lifetime ago.

It seems that the users would grasp the left and right side of the laptop when docking the laptop. This would arch the middle upwards and take its toll on the graphics card.