Ways to get more power in laptop setups

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

As I have gone laptop recently, and I'm somewhat notorious for using huge
amounts of different instruments and effects, the computer performance is 
an
issue for me.

I have thought about TC Electronic's powercore firewire, which would allow
me to take at least the "normal" effects (like EQs, compressors, filters,
reverb etc.) off the main CPU. But then again, the price of this thing is
about the same as a 3+ GHz Turion or 1.7GHz Centrino DualCore, together 
with
1GB of RAM and 17'' screen and whatnot...

So the question is: if I had that kind of money, would it be invested 
better
into a powercore firewire or into another computer (not necessarily 
laptop),
or into a completely different solution.

Keep replies offlist, please; I'll post a summary to the list if wanted.

        Rainer