If I remember correctly, the problems were said to be that Microb is based on Firefox 3 and Gears doesn't yet support FF3. Google will definitely be working on getting FF3 support in there before Firefox 3 is released, so that problem at least should go away.

As for your laptop, just move all your existing documents into Google docs and benefit from the versioning, sharing and ability to create paper airplanes (look on the File menu for that one!)