Ok, so I have decided to (because of various reasons) replace my desktop (at work and home) with a laptop. I have been looking around, and the one I found most impressive is the "Toshiba Satellite 5105-S607".

There are a couple of concerns though:This model comes with a variety of ports but it does'nt have a serial port (wtf!). What all Empeg 'functionality' will I lose if I go for a machine with no serial port? Dropping to a shell, and upgrading the player software? I normally use Tony's logo editor to upgrade Hijack, but I remember trying out jEmplode once and upgrading Hijack via ethernet too. So is player upgrade going to be the only problem? Or can I do that also over ethernet?

Dropping to shell: Is serial port the only way I can use HyperTerminal with? And is there any 'USB to serial port' adaptor out there?

Another concern (not related to Empeg) is that these things come without a BIOS. I still don't know how that is possible, but a friend of mine who bought another Toshiba ("Satellite 1905-S277") swears that is so (apparently the OS, in this case Windows XP Home edition, controls the BIOS). So, does this mean that I can't install Linux on my laptop (if I decide to go with the 5105-S607)? That would suck so bad..

Any comments, insights and suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks!
~Yogi.