I remember quite a while ago reading about a program called dv rack that turned your computer into a field monitor and recorder. In the do it yourself topics people were talking about buying old laptops off of ebay and using the program to create direct to edit system. I was just looking over the specs of the dv rack express on bh Serious Magic | DV Rack Express Video Software | 20029000 | B&H (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/376545-REG/Serious_Magic_20029000_DV_Rack_Express_Video.html#specifications) and was considering that my net book meets the requirements given i buy a firewire express card. Anyone use dv rack on a net book. Did it work well. I know my netbook only has limited storage. does dv rack function ok transfering to a firewire external hard drive (assuming I have the ability to power it.

I'm surprised you can still buy it, now that DV Rack has been folded into Adobe CS4/5.
I would not expect a netbook to keep up with capture, especially while on batteries. All netbooks throttle performance to save batteries.

DV Rack was pretty good. I used it lots on my bog standard Dell Studio laptop, outputting to an external HD via USB2, as the DV input was used by the camera.

In fact, the DV Rack software was actually better suited to me than the version that became Adobe On Location. The nice test utilities and the ability to motion sense record made it very handy - and I miss these features. The best bit was that at the time, I was on CS3, and I found it handy to split files into smaller chunks for editing. DV rack enabled one prod on the keyboard to start the next file, close the first without losing frames. I was really happy with it. I've still got it on old machine.