I'm getting ready to head out to PDC to do some support work and I'm faced with a very difficult decision, in my mind. As I stated in my last post, I just got a shiny, new (old) MacBook Pro. I've been using it for two days now and the only thing I've found that was kind of wonky has been working on my timesheet in Excel (the Mac Office 2008 version). The dilemma, to cut to the quick, is that I am worried that something will come up at the PDC where the MacBook Pro will not suffice. If there was an issue I could be concerned about, straight up, I would address it, but this is more of a nebulous fear.
I currently use a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 with 8GB of RAM and a 160GB drive as my primary work machine. It's been doing "OK," but there are always quirks. The new MacBook Pro has less RAM, and a slightly slower processor, but it also has much more hard drive space. Most of these things are a non-issue, but that is where the fear comes into play.
I think that what I'm going to do is just end up taking both machines with me. The nice thing about working backstage is that I'll be able to (mostly) set up my stuff and then not have to worry about it. I don't think having a "backup" Thinkpad is going to be an issue, but I can have it there as a security blanket, just in case things go belly-up. If someone DOES point out that I'm a huge geek and I should just pick one machine and stick to it, I can claim that the Thinkpad is a backup for the demo! Woo! I win!