Progress so far

So I yanked the hard drive.

I have two linux live CDs. The latest Kubunutu (Fiesty Fawn Hurd 5) and Backtrack 2, latest beta.

Both boot fine. I had some issues with Konqueror not resolving names, but I think this might
have been a problem with the local network configuration. There are also issues with some
websites being browswer-snobbish; I might need firefox.

I have a 1 GB USB memory stick; Right now, I have the .deb files to install firefox on it,
along with a few files that I intend to work on (IETF drafts), and configuration scripts
(one liners) for connecting to home and office wireless. I may add a few more .deb files
(emacs, tcsh).

Running top(1) I was getting worried about space, so I created a swap file
(dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/usbdrive/swapfile bs=1024000 count=256; mkswap /mnt/usbdrive/swapfile;
swapon /mnt/usbdrive/swapfile). I'll have to watch and see if I actually use that.

I tried two different laptops. Both have extra batteries. Both can not be used when running
diskless. The laptop I am taking gives you a choice of the CD/DVD drive or swapping it out
and putting a battery in the same bay (Dell Lattitude D810). The other (IBM x31) gives you
the choice of attaching the extra battery to the bottom, or a docking station like thing
that CD drive, external adapters, etc. Oh, well. Looks like PC manufactures are not
designing PCs to run diskless. Yet.