Maybe I am missing something but what difference would it make?  Anyone?

There should't be any difference, other than that with a laptop, you can get some hands-on exp. trying to crack the WEP at the local Starbuck's.    Harder to do that using a desktop.

Starbuck's in my area use T-mobile, which wants something like $0.10 a minute or something. So I just go to the local Phoenix coffee shop, which is closer to me than Starbucks, where they have FREE Wifi.

Sounds like a plan. I had a customer of mine GIVE me her old Thinkpad I series. It's an I1200/I1300, came with external USB floppy and all manuals. She was having trouble with it booting. I went and bought her a new Sony Vaio notebook with XP Home, and showed her how to use it. Most amazingly, it went through on MY credit card. She reimbursed me for the cost of it, PLUS $400.00 for myself on it. Turns out the only problem with it [the Sthinkpad] was the power supply. I wnet and bought a replacement power supply, and it works great. Until recently, it didn't make any noise, and I couldn't figure out why. In Device manager, all audio hardware was running fine. I went through the manual, and discovered the FN key and page down, which turns sound on/off. Now it makes sound like it's supposed to! Yay! 

I had ANOTHER customer of mine GIVE me her old Dell Inspiron 1000 notebook; it had a problem with the keyboard. The keyboard kept inserting random characters into online text boxes, and the keyboard made noise. Took it out, and shot some air in it. Nothing. I went and bought a replacement keyboard on eBay. They guy I bought it from shipped it to me in a big bubble envelope, so it arrived all bent out of shape, and in worse condition than the original one. I emailed the guy about it, he told me he would try to find me another one. He couldn't. He refunded my money and told me to keep it.
So I kept playing with the oroginal keyboard that came installed. Took it out again, and shot some more air into it. It works Great! I now use it as my main machine. It's only a Celeron, but it's faster than my Dell desktop which is 8 years old and only a Pentium II at 333Mhz. I now do 99% of my online time on this Inspiron, from my bed. I run a Cat5e from my Netgear Firewall connected to the PII, in the spare bedroom, and do all my internet from my bed. It's easier, too; I had abdominal surgery last Nov. I get around fine, now.   

 

Yeah, I hear ya. I've been drooling over the F.R.E.D., which is a complete forensic desktop optimised for forensics, natcherly. It inlcudes dual core CPUs, about 2GB of RAM, an option for a RAID, and comes with a flat-screen monitor. Only 6 grand. Ouch! They also have a version in a laptop, only 4 grand. cool stuff.
 

Actually, the models I am looking at run anywhere from 1.83 to 2.13 which should be quick enough.  Since I work for IBM they are fairly cheap.

Yeah, that IS nice. Never realized it or appreciated it until you mentioned it. My Inspiron 1000 has the one latch in the middle, and my Stinkpad has the two latches on the side.

I had to do an "emergency servicre call' through a friend for a Dr. that mostly lives in Hawaii. This is maybe, May of 05. Whenever it was, it's been a long time, now. This Dr. that lives in Hawaii was visiting his mom here in University Hts. He had an IBM Stinkpad T40 (I think) with the blue one-touch recovery button. He was afraid he had lost all his data, cause the machine wouldn't boot up. What it was, was he had just kicked it into hibernation, and didn't realize it. I recovered it from hibernation, told him what it was, and how to do it in the future, if he wanted it to. No data lost, he was fine. haven't heard anything out of him since.

Well, got an interview today back in Akron. Better hop in the shower, I guess. Seeya later.....