Understand what you mean about the luxury of larger screen estate, but of course there's nothing stopping you picking up a cheap desktop LCD and using that in conjunction with your laptop (and a docking station) when you're at your desk ?
All depends how much of a road-warrior you are.... if you're a travelling sales-rep on your laptop every day with complex spreadsheets, then sure the built-in 17 inch may be attractive.
But if you're only teleworking a few times a month and the rest of your time is spent chained to a desk, then the cheaper and more portable solution will be docking station and external monitor.
Toshiba is a good choice of brand by the way (at least their business range, I haven't looked at or used the range they target at consumers... of course there's nothing stopping you buying a business model ! ). So you're looking in the right place.
