...using the laptop as primary computer for CPU intensive tasks - gaming, video, music, then your concern will probably beperformance. Sitting a waiting for a computer to finish something sucks, no matter how pretty your computer looks. I personally...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10301433-64.html
...Remote rendering through the X11 protocol or the PEX protocol is handled automatically by XGL. However there may beperformance implications associated with running XGL across a network. When a client application is running locally under SunSoft...
http://pmaillot.chez.com/xgl-wp.pdf