I think it depends on how you work / how much resources you need. Yes, writing much on the SD card is not a great idea, but you can always use a USB stick instead. At least I did use a pi0w as a laptop for a few months. Granted, my requirements for a mobile Linux machine are pretty different from what the masses use these days, but it was a great experience for me. With a power bank, I could go on for days. I even wrote a post which describes one of my first iterations: https://blind.guru/./blog/2016-06-12-brlpi.html A few days after that post, the 0w was released, so I upgraded pretty quickly and some of the things I had to do on the pi0 were no longer necessary.