Wish my laptop offered a docking station - had one for the old one, but it's not up to newer apps and out of drive space with no internal options available. I only found two laptops with both firewire AND stereo line IN and OUT - both were Toshiba, and the line in/out function and firewire were NOT negotiable. Thank God for PC slots... I know I could have opted for a PC audio card, but didn't think about that til the deal was done. Still, not too bad - I hook up power (bought two adapters, one for the road and one for the desk) , RJ-45 and a USB mouse (hate touchpads) and I'm there for home.
Far as room tests are concerned, I'm not convinced that steady state sine waves are all that's necessary since I've yet to find a piece of music I like that only uses them

So I'm probably going to spring for the ETF package soon, including mic and pre. Runs about $550 for everything.
Even though the CARA stuff appears to be quite powerful at a very reasonable price, it's probably too time-consuming for my intended use. See next -
My goal is to be able to walk into a customer's place (whether commercial or consumer) with a laptop, powered nearfield(s) and small bag of misc. stuff, and tell them within 20 minutes what/where/how they need to do to fix their sound. If I can accomplish that, I could probably quit my DDJ (Dreaded Day Job) and just play with fun toys - Ahhh, hope springs eternal... Steve
Soooo, when a Musician dies, do they hear the white noise at the end of the tunnel??!? Hmmmm...