Desktop/Laptop Hybrid?

[mechanesthesia]

I am adamantly against desktops. I haven't used a desktop since 2005. A laptop is perfectly fine.

But. I do have one issue. "Always On." That's the one thing you can do with a desktop that you can't do with a laptop. If you leave a laptop on all the time, it will fry. Leaving a PC on all the time opens you to a whole world of features in terms of logging in remotely. You can access your PC from work or even from your iPhone. You can select a printer that a PC is connected on if it's in the same network, etc...

Well. I want to have some kind of desktop that is always on, but I want it to be connected to my laptop. Or rather, I want it to BE my laptop. Can I have a desktop and Remotely or Wirelessly connect to it through my laptop? Can I store everything on the desktop, and just use the laptop for memory to open and run programs? Is there a way that I can have a "shared folder" which has all of my files from my laptop and desktop? Also, in terms of "desktop" I'm thinking of getting a Mac-Mini or something like that. Can I do this with an external hard drive? Can external hard drives be used like a desktop?

Sorry if it doesn't make sense, but I have really confused myself trying to figure this out.

 

[Mal]

If you leave a laptop on all the time, it will fry.

Where did you get that notion? It's false, btw. Laptops can run all the time without any issues at all, I shut mine down only very rarely, and the only reason I even put it to sleep is to carry it around (or when it's running on battery, to conserve energy if I don't do anything for a while).

As far as using it as a desktop, why not just get an external monitor, keyboard/mouse, and external hard drives if you need more space, and run from there? Anything fancier and you should just get an actual separate desktop computer, maybe using DropBox or rsync to sync files.

jW

 

[Gregg2]

I've heard that hybrids don't do as well in cold weather...