[brudgers]

I think getting away from the office with a laptop is a great idea.

A few thoughts:

If you're not really using the Mac Mini, why not sell it to subsidize your laptop?

If you're running Linux {or OSX} you can SSH into your work computer and actually work in other parts of the house using the laptop. This highlights the fact that you don't necessarily need a lot of power in the laptop if you're willing to configure your other hardware to provide some services...and configuring computers to work together is some quality tinkering.

Anyway, I bought a Thinkpad X201 Tablet for less than $200 off ebay including a replacement battery. It's mostly just a matter of patience and willingness to accept that it will be used instead of new. I'm usually booting into the Ubuntu partition with Grub but have the included Windows 7 as an option [that looks like it will be upgraded to 10 at the end of the summer].

It's a bit like the pleasure [and pain] of owning an old car.

Good luck.

[paulornothing]

While not a bad idea to sell the mac mini, I kind of like having it plus eventually will probably use it as a server (it's basically a media center downstairs). I suppose I can just be patient and look around for an Thinkpad X series.