Nice article. rsync.net is one part of my personal computing setup that I never even think twice about. It's simple and it works, and that clearly applies to the infrastructure too. I use ZFS locally and it has made managing my own data strangely pleasing, and it's nice to have the same system on my off-site storage too.
On the laptop-front, I find myself drifting towards a similar setup to John. I have a hefty workstation laptop but the battery life is dire and it weighs a ton, so I pretty much just run it as a headless machine next to my server now. I'm planning on picking up a Pinebook Pro as an "outdoors" machine to just remote in. I also find myself extremely unwilling to arse about swapping multiple machines on my monitors so being able to keep my work machine separate and secure but operate it from my desktop is a nice compromise.
On the laptop-front, I find myself drifting towards a similar setup to John. I have a hefty workstation laptop but the battery life is dire and it weighs a ton, so I pretty much just run it as a headless machine next to my server now. I'm planning on picking up a Pinebook Pro as an "outdoors" machine to just remote in. I also find myself extremely unwilling to arse about swapping multiple machines on my monitors so being able to keep my work machine separate and secure but operate it from my desktop is a nice compromise.