I have a problem. I work too much. I work at the office, then I come home and work. This is a problem because when I come home I’m using a different computer. All my settings are different, all my programs are different. If I install a visual studio extension at work I miss it when I get home.

So I looked into various solutions.

Laptop

The obvious one is using a laptop instead. I could plug it into my monitor and keyboard and mouse wherever I am. The downside to this is.. it’s not upgradable.. graphics power is limited.. and I’m pretty sure I can’t easily plug 3 monitors into one laptop. 

Active Domain

I tried this, and it kind of worked. The downside was that programs weren’t synced. While I’m sure that it is possible to sync programs using some advanced technique – in the end I thought the whole system was flawed because I’d be transferring stuff from the office via my home internet connection.

Remote Desktop

Using a computer over remote desktop isn’t the same feeling as using one in real life. Especially when you’re really using it – and not just changing a few settings on a server. Plus I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t handle games very well.

Hard Drive – Winner

What I’m doing now is carrying a hard drive to and from work. It’s got the OS on it, and a D partition with my work.

I bought a slot loader thing for the front of my PC at work and home, so I can just slot it in.

I would have considered a USB external drive but I’m not sure whether you can install Windows on one (easily). Carrying around a bare hard drive does feel a bit risky – so I’m going to set up a system to back it up easily.

This is working for me right now though. I can come from the office – plug it in my home PC – and have exactly the same environment that I had at work. The only downside I’m suffering from is that now I have to actually shut my computers down.