Back when I was working on a magazine devoted to AutoCAD users, I used to envy the engineers and designers at the conventions because, after the classes and exhibitions closed, they were pretty much free to hang out and enjoy themselves in the evening and I would have to lock myself in my hotel room and peck out stories on my laptop. Mobile PCs that would run programs like AutoCAD and MicroStation were just too expensive to hand out to those who made trips to conventions a couple of times a year. Well guys, payback's a drag (that is the saying isn't it?). NVIDIA just let us know about its new Quadro2 Go, a graphics processing unit (GPU) that the company says will allow engineers, animators, and technical professionals to run their high-end apps on a laptop. NVIDIA says Quadro2 Go is optimized for all major OpenGL and DirectX professional applications. The GPU gives you a transform and lighting engine, accelerated antialiased lines, accelerated two-sided lighting, OpenGL overlay support, and optimized window memory management. It also uses offers NVIDIA's standard stable of custom drivers that include the ELSA MAXtreme driver for 3ds max, the ELSA POWERdraft driver for AutoCAD, NVIDIA's QuadroView driver for 3D visualization, and PowerMizer for power management. The processor has been certified for 3ds max, AutoCAD, Catia, I-DEAS, Lightwave, Maya, Mechanical Desktop, MicroStation, Pro/Engineer, Softimage, Solid Edge, Solidworks, Unigraphics, and other pro apps. Fujitsu will be putting the Quadro2 Go in their Celsius line of notebook PCs in the fall of 2001, and other vendors are expected to follow suit. Next time you're traveling, your supervisor might ask you why you're sitting at the bar when your latest project is running behind. I can empathize, but I can't help but smile.