When doing laptop stuff I will either edit directly off the card, or typically use the main drive. What's cool about the Lenovo laptops is that you can get a Superbay drive, and actually have two hard disks installed internally. So you get two full-speed SATA drives internally, instead of having to choke on a USB or firewire drive and deal with the external bulk.
Well you're probably a younger man than I but that 12" high small wide screen wouldn't work for these eyes without glasses and I hate to get in that habbit. I look for 17" wide screen. How about isn't there a PCMCIA SATA controller out there? I could swear I've read about one.