thanks everyone for the good advice. I was going to spec out a tower, but perhaps a laptop would be better. Thing is I'm not really on the road anymore, and have my current laptop, so wonder if the ultimate speed of a tower would be better and suffer moving things over to the laptop when I go overseas, NY, etc.
I would just amp up my RAM in my current laptop, but the harddrive, and more I suspect, is on it's way out and every time I bring it in to Apple, they can't replicate the problems.
Having had Macs since 1985, I think the recent products are like the Mercedes of the 90s...all reputation, no quality.
Anyway, I love the double monitor set-up now and that's pushing the laptop buy.
Anyone have data that a tower will only be marginally faster than a properly spec'd laptop?