Two computers is one too many

I'm finding myself constantly irritated by my dual-computer setup. I have a very reliable and downright solidly built IBM Thinkpad T42 (this laptop predates the sale of IBM personal computer line to Lenovo, I think, maybe). For home computing I have the FANTASTIC SUPER-AMAZING 15" Macbook Pro and I love it. I'd like to make this computer my primary and sole computer covering both work and home.

For those not working for a global mega-corporation allow me to say while this tasks sounds simple and straight-forward dropping my work PC for a Mac is anything but. Many applications that are required for the day-to-day functions of my job are PC only or Mac versions are not licensed. Furthermore my employer has strict policies about co-mingling of personal and professional data (mostly as an effort to keep viruses brought in from home to a minimum).

So what are my options?

1) I could install my laptop in the computing and networking lap and control the computer via VNC or straight-up Remote Desktop.

Problem: The company has strict policies about brining in outside devices and plugging them into the corporate LAN. Contractors, for instance, are issued work-built laptops for use during their contracts. There are plans, someday, to reach a point where 3rd party computers will be allowed on the network but we're not there yet. So I can't put my Mac on the company LAN, at least not directly.

2) Use wireless.

Problem: This is conidered the same as using the company LAN. In a word - forbidden.

3) Cry about this on my blog.

Problem: Yours. That is what I'm doing right now in case you haven't noticed.

4) Use VMware Converter and image my laptop thus preserving the applications and move the image to my laptop running VMware Fusion.

Problem: But you said you can't put that machine on the corporte LAN, isn't that the same thing?

Yes, and thank you for paying attention. You win a cookie. But what I have yet to say is I have, at my desk, access to an "outside" DSL line via a regular, old ISP. We use this connection for testing remote access to different locations around the globe and it's a handy thing to have indeed. So, in the strictest of senses I could put the Mac on the DSL line and launch a VPN session via my VMware virtual machine.

Performance won't differ much from being on the corporate LAN. Really. Quite a bit of my work is done overseas anyway so simply connecting up to the VPN concentrations in the country of choice isn't that much of an inconvience. Actually it's none at all and could be extremely beneficial for testing RFC1918 address conflicts that appear nearly constanlty because we, as a company, seem to be afraid of IPv6. But that's another story for another time.

Connecting the Mac to the DSL line and the XP virtual machine to the VPN gives me, in effect, a split-horizon setup that I'd really like. I could fark.com away over the Internet connection skipping the proxies entirely (or I could set up Firefox with a reverse proxy to somewhere else entirely and keep Safari "directly connected".

What are the next steps? Investigate VMware Converter a bit more. I occasioanlly have to attending meetings, etc, and it would be nice to have a still-functional Thinkpad in case I've got to sit in a meeting room (walking in with a non-standard machine would create a stir and one that I don't necessarily want to flaunt my choice in computing platform and the extent I'm willing to go in order to get the machine I want to use on a daily basis.

No, I'm not trying to "get away" with anythere here. There are just times when applications I have my Mac, namely Photoshop, would be very nice to have at my fingertips and right now that's just not possible. Work isn't going to license Photoshop for my work PC nor should they. Just because I could do some occasional work for the group using that applciation do not a business justification make.

Tonight beings the forklift upgrade of Parallels with the purcahse of VMware Fusion via Amazon or Apple.com (most likely apple.com). No, on second though I'd better do that tomorrow. I have to check and see what my connection options are on the back of my montior. Monitors are another story - people have purchased their own monitors and brought them into work. Yeah, technically it's a no-no too but it's not like you're going to spread a virus around with a monitor so people tend to look the other way. Someday I'd like to have a 24" Apple monitor to go along wth my laptop but that will have to wait for a bit (and, yes, a 30" monitor would be ever better but I'm not going to drop $1800 for a monitor that is nearly as large as my entire cubicle).