Heyas,

My $0.02....

Commuting sucks. Commuting to reserve sucks 10X that.

With that said, if I was a newbie, I'd STRONGLY consider moving to base unless it situation really, really prevented it...like an ill parent, or a spouse that has some kind of equity in his/her job (partner in a law or medical practice, for example).

But if you HAVE to commute:

1) Never commute off line unless your primary and secondary plans fall apart. Don't use off line JS as part of your plans.

2) ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS book a jumpseat. Do not depend on open seats in the back, as they can vanish in an instant.

3) Keep the commute to one leg. Problems multiply exponentially with the number of legs involved.

4) Keep the crossings of the time zones to an absolute minimum, if not zero.

Once you're off probation, you can probably be a bit more flexible. But any sort of responsible commuting WILL eat into your quality of life, and commuting to reserve even more so.

BTW, I use Parallels 5.0 on my MacBook Pro, running Windows XP, and it runs all the courseware just fine. It's nice because you don't have to reboot. Well worth the $60.

Nu