@jake - while feasible, most computer musicians I know are very protective of their DAWs. Some go as far as making sure their DAWs are not directly connected to the internet. Of course, this is case-to-case, but you can only see so much remotely. In some instances, a bit of tinkering under the hood may be required. For ex., a few months ago, I helped fixed a celebrity's DAW by swapping out a firewire card. Aside from the IRQ conflict, turns out the card was becoming defective - and he already had another guy regularly looking after his gear! What wasn't readily apparent was the IRQ conflict which was causing this celeb's problem since the system was working fine before.
@albumin - If you have a fairly recent computer, notably a core i-series intel or even a recent AMD setup, you can already use those. Just make it a 2-drive system. I would put my money in a very good audio interface that can be easily migrated to a newer computer since computers usually become dated after about 18 months or so. Get a reliable usb or firewire interface for your 20k, and make sure it has enough input for your needs. You can get an internal card, but it has to be pcie since pci slots are becoming rare in recent motherboards.
@zushikat0 - what kind of laptop is this? most recent laptops I've seen have audio ports that change configuration according to whats plugged into them.