I am hoping I can get some good feedback. We are moving in a few weeks and am seriously thinking of substituting my PC tower with a laptop. My wife already has her laptop and I love the flexibility of going anywhere with it. My issue is that currently I download and burn movies on the tower. I want to do the same thing if I got a laptop but I feel that burning movies on a laptop would be too much work for something so small - I am thinking of going with a laptop and an external DVD burner. Am I making a smart move leaving the tower and going laptop with the set-up I mentioned? I am nervous because, like the old saying: If it isn't broke don't fix it.
Since you already have the tower, you could do this: Setup the tower as a Remote Desktop system; you don't even need to plug in a screen once you get it setup. You can then use it as a downloading/burning PC, but you control it with your laptop and there is no desk space waisted with the screen, keyboard, mouse, and speakers of the desktop. Not only will this save wear and tear on the laptop, but it will also let you keep downloading at home speed while you are out and about with your laptop. While you are at it, you could even make the tower into a media server as well.
All the laptop DVD burners I've seen work absolutely fine. No reason to buy an external DVD writer but you can if you like.