Thanks for all the great advices that people have shared with me here.

I think I will take the advices and purchase the small air compressor
alone without using the air tank for these reasons. Then I can run it
in my basement to fill up its built-in air tank, and bring it to the
workshop.

As suggested by a couple newsgroup members here, I should be able to
shoot all the nails without getting the air compressor to re-start
because I don't shoot that many nails anyway. This means noise will
not be an issue.

The small oil-lubed pan-cake air compressor from HF that another
newsgroup member has suggested looks quite good, and the price is
right. After saying this, I may get a small oil-lubed direct-drive
2-gal single-hot-dog air compressor because it looks lighter than the
pan-cake version.

Thanks again for all the good advices.

Jay Chan