I've always had a laptop from work. I plug into my home desktop monitor when at home & spare monitor at work when in the city office. I don't bother closing the laptop, and use both screens (dual monitor set-up). Only time I use the laptop monitor on its own is when travelling and at client sites. Be aware though. I have managed to kill two hard disk drives, on two different laptops over the last five years. Life of both hdds was around 2 years each. Julian