the virtual machines while away from my home network. I live in Colorado, but all my family and friends are in Utah so I travel home a lot when I take vacation time. Also, I'm collaborating on a side-project with friends that live in Utah and Idaho. Eventually, we need to purchase some space with a hosting service like Heroku, but I don't want to start making monthly payments to something until I'm comfortable enough with the platform we'll be using. Otherwise it will feel like a waste of money, like buying a boat without a boat trailer.

I probably will buy a mid-level laptop like you recommend just so I can have something to get started. I won't be doing anything that is resource-heavy until I really understand the platform. Then I'll either just purchase that cloud space or set up virtual servers on a desktop like you recommend. Thanks for the recommendation!