Thought I'd contribute something here.
Here's a shot of me with my keys rig at my band FreeThought's last gig on Friday night.
Not the greatest shot to actually see my setup but I'll give you a runthrough.
The board is an M-Audio Oxygen 88 MIDI Controller. That's sending MIDI data via USB to my laptop which is a HP Pavilion dv6 (2010 model). Upgraded the RAM in that thing so now it runs quite smoothly. On the laptop I'm running Acoustica Mixcraft 6 as my VST host. That's hosting a whole bunch of Native Instruments/UVI/Korg/freeware stuff. Got some nice sounds. The audio interface I'm using is a Lexicon Lambda, and it's all sitting on an Ultimate Support VS80 V-Stand. The second tier is being used to hold the laptop. In addition to that I use a cheap USB footswitch to scroll through patches in my DAW.
Looking at (finally) upgrading to a Kronos midyear (when I get all mah tax dollars back), which will improve things significantly. The soft synth rig is great but it has been known to crash from time to time which can be super inconvenient. I won't be fully replacing the soft synths though; I'll still use my laptop (integrated with the Kronos once I get it) for the really unique sounds (multisampling is WAAAAAAAY too much effort), but the rest of it (pianos, strings, choirs, brass, EPs, whatever) will be all handled by the Kronos for much more smooth sailing.
More pics from the night can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.388469384605978.1073741827.148446585274927&type=3While you're there, why don't you head on over and give my band a big old Facebook like?
