If you think that making a high-powered workstation portable involves piling a desktop system, keyboard, mouse, monitor, and a generator onto a hand truck and wheeling it around with a very long Ethernet cable, think again. A host of recently released mobile workstations can enable bring you high performance computing performance wherever you need to work, whether that's down the hall, across town or on the other side of the globe.

Just as the notebook PC opened up new vistas for traveling spreadsheet jockeys, Web designers and those addicted to on-screen solitaire, the portable workstation is a declaration of independence for the roving engineer, film editor, or math maven. It doesn't matter if the job is creating part of the next hit animated movie, designing electronic circuitry, or analyzing reams of survey data -- the portable workstation can be a valuable tool in a client's boardroom, a factory, or even at the beach.

That said, portable systems make up only a small portion of the $3 billion spent on workstations last year. "There's a lot of variety out there in terms of mobile computers," explains Leslie Fiering, vice president and analyst at Gartner Group, "but the portable workstation market is tiny in comparison to PC notebooks. It's a sliver of a sliver." She adds that in addition to makers of portable workstations like Tadpole Computer Inc., several conventional notebook vendors have systems that balance the need to get the job done with the wanderlust we all feel.

Whether you get a beefed-up sibling of a conventional notebook -- like those from Apple, Dell, Fujitsu, and HP -- or a purpose-built portable workstation -- from the likes of Tadpole or Sun -- you'll find processing power a higher design priority than battery life. Systems that use RISC processors like Sun's SPARC are from the traditional guard and specialize in Unix applications, while those that use CISC chips like Intel's Pentium 4 and Pentium M are on the rise.

Portable workstations have a few similar qualities. All should stock at least 512MB of memory as well as a megabyte or more of CPU cache, so the most-used data and instructions are close to the processor for top performance.

Even more than CPU power, graphics performance separates the workstation wheat from the mainstream-laptop chaff. Portable workstation vendors can choose from a variety of OpenGL-compatible, high-end graphics accelerators with 64MB or 128MB of dedicated memory -- such as available mobile members of both ATI Technologies' FireGL and Nvidia's Quadro workstation graphics-chip families -- for rendering 3D images. And while they can't compare to a desktop 21-inch monitor, the best notebook workstations have high-resolution 15- to 17-inch LCD screens.

There's a price to pay for portability, however. While all modern systems use lithium-ion cells to power the notebook between charges, portable workstations can generally run for only an hour or two between forays to a power outlet.

Also, mobile workstations are a rung down the technology ladder from the fastest desktop workstations. Keep in mind also, that each high-end component, large screen, or humongous battery adds weight that you'll be carrying from Gate 47 to Gate 6 on your next trip. Most workstations clock in well over 8 pounds.