My SO is going to be admitted into Medical School at UF, so living in Ocala will both give us both a commute, but her's will be half as long as mine. If we don't go to Ocala, then we will be separate for the entirety of our respective programs. One benefit of trying the halfway point together, I think, is if it is necessary we can just relocate to our respective cities (Gainesville for her and Tampa for me) if things don't work out with the commutes after about a year. She is currently in Gainesville right now, but she'll have to relocate anyway at the end of her lease.
That's a good point. My SO has to move soon, anyway, and the question is whether we move together to Ocala, or she stays in Gainesville and I relocate to Tampa. We don't currently live together, but have in the past when I was in gradschool in Gainesville.
In my MA program, I was in the department between 3 and 5 times a week, depending on my course load and teaching obligations. I intend to plan for being there five days a week, but it will be nice if the department could reduce it down to 3 or 4 days. It would help a lot, but I don't think there is any guarantee. Having lectures on hand for drives could be useful. I have also hear of folks having an app on their smartphone read them PDF text; it's not perfect, but it could help.