I'm still wrestling with buying a computer. Almost settled on an MSI
BookPC 6215T but realize it's going to cost as much as a laptop by the
time I set it up to take a PCMCIA card.

The alternative is a laptop with a remote display, keyboard and mouse.
The only benefit I can see to the book PC is that I can turn it on and
off easily. Does anyone know of a brand of laptop/notebook that has an
on-off switch accessible from the outside? I don't want to have to
take the laptop out of a secure place every time I want to start it.

My very old Hitachi laptop had this capability, but I need the modern
DVD-RW and a big disk drive.