That's perfect, the combination lightroom and photoshop works very well. I don't know how you work but use DNG if you've both programs, it works much better than if you use PEF because it takes some step out of the workflow.

Not sure that's the same thing...

You can try focusing under TL-light, that's most of the time green.

If you can only get one program i would go for CS5.
Lightroom is basically a more fluid experience/package off bridge and Adobe Camera RAW and few other things. But the developing module is the same as Adobe Camera RAW that you find in CS5.
So the things you can make with Lightroom you can also make with CS5, you've precisely the same tools but it's less handy and archiving is a bit of a pain.

I can really do without Lightroom but not without Photoshop...

Good for the girls, not sure for the men ^^;

You can also go for completely free and go for Debian, the new version went out lat month and most of the time it's more stable then Ubuntu.

Off centre ballheads should work very well on monopod.
http://www.gitzo.com/product_list/72038.71852.83184.0.0/off_centre_heads

I wonder if it would BF with blue light....

In photoshop if you use save for web then the setting high quality means a compresion of 60% that should be enough to bring it down the 200kb depending the photo.

here is a comparison in the middle you can select differnt compresion while looking at the photo at 200% zoom http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/imagetypes.htm

As you can see 60% still has a lot of quality.

It's better to have the most amount of pixels, if you know the displaying device then native pixels is even better if the computer will need to resize the photo again as well it's a lost of quality.

I mostly use 1024x768 for web and quick "showcasing" most display devices like beamers have this resolution natively and almost all monitors should be able to view it without resizing.

Indeed great weather all this week, what lucky

You've a point there but i mostly use the bag to carry my gear from one location to another so it doesn't really apply then...