I historically much prefer a desktop computer as well. Despite this, I've exclusively used laptops now for nearly a decade. The reasoning is simple:

When combined with a docking station and external peripherals and input devices, a laptop is just a desktop with an integrated battery backup and screen that can become a mobile computing device on demand.

I've fully adjusted to this way of working, and the real crossover point for me was when laptops became available with enough RAM and graphics capabilities that I no longer felt I needed a desktop to do some of my work. I can run two external displays off my laptop with it as the center screen using ergo monitor stands, and run my external mechanical keyboard, ergo mouse, and my headphone stack, boom microphone, external camera, and wired networking all from a docking station with sufficient bandwidth to not be problematic in 2022. I no longer need or want a desktop.

One other bonus for laptops is that it's way easier for an IT department to manage. It's got all the guts, all the connectivity, some version of all the major peripherals, and all of that under one SKU.

Support and warranty work is simplified when you only have 4 or 5 models of computer in your org, and can reference a spreadsheet to see exactly what a given user has in front of them.

I still prefer a desktop PC for my personal use, because I play videogames, and a desktop is what's historically best for that. A side benefit of having a personal desktop means that I can reuse whatever peripherals, furniture, etc between either my 'work' or 'home' desk configuration.

If I wanted to go full-circle optimized for my next PC build, which I may as well think about, I could plug all of my peripherals into the same thunderbolt dock, and only worry about that one cable, instead of the (potentially) 4 USB devices I'd be switching back and forth.

> Support and warranty work is simplified when you only have 4 or 5 models of computer in your org, and can reference a spreadsheet to see exactly what a given user has in front of them.

In theory you could treat desktops the same way. Any hardware problem? Discard entire machine.

This is obviously wasteful compared to replacing only the component which is broken. But it's hard sell to label that as a disadvantage.

True, you can apply it to desktops, but those are bulkier and more expensive to ship. I've kept the box my laptop was shipped to me in, and it's got all bases covered if I need to send it back.

I'd wager that sending a laptop back and forth twice is probably about as expensive as a single round trip for a desktop, and with less risk of breakage, since all the parts are soldered in place, with much less wiggle room for heavier stuff to break off.

> If I wanted to go full-circle optimized for my next PC build, which I may as well think about, I could plug all of my peripherals into the same thunderbolt dock, and only worry about that one cable, instead of the (potentially) 4 USB devices I'd be switching back and forth.

This is what I do with my laptop today. I am considering building a SFF desktop in the future just to have, but before I do so I'd like to find a robust and performant solution for TB4 switching, at which point I'd use the same set of peripherals and input devices for both systems.

My next PC build will be SFF, too. I've currently got a small-ish desktop, but want more space on my actual desk, and don't want to move it off because I'd have to deal with variable cable lengths(sit-stand desk).

Going down to mini-ITX motherboard size means I'm going to probably be low on ports and expansion options, so having a dock will be an important part of the setup, and will also help reduce cable clutter/cable shuffling.

One other thing I might look into is an audio switcher. I don't have an 'audio stack', but usually can't stand the electric whine on most basic onboard audio. If I can keep my headphones on, and just flip a switch to change the channel they receive from, I'd be thrilled.

I have a Dell monitor (U3419W) that switches USB output based on video input. So all the peripherals (mouse, keyboard, webcam) go to my desktop when the monitor gets an HDMI signal, and to my (work) laptop when it gets a DP signal. Works pretty well.

Since I've been traveling extensively I have started using a laptop also.

The downsides are the obvious extra cost for the laptop. Less obvious is the maintenance.

Every few years I will spill a drink on my keyboard. If it's an external keyboard I can repair it or replace it easily. If it's a laptop it could be catastrophic failure. Yes I know I can attach keyboard to laptop.

Then there's the laptop screen, it is easily damaged when traveling. Sometimes the damage is minor. My laptop screen recently started having problems, sometimes it works, sometimes it flickers, sometimes it's just a black screen. External monitor is currently attached, but that's a poor mobile solution. Replacing an external monitor is cheap. So, I found a website that can sell me the replacement monitor. I have to decide is it worth repairing or should I get a new one. Cost of repairing is about 1/3rd the cost of a brand new equivalent laptop.

> Every few years I will spill a drink on my keyboard

I thought this only happened in movies. I always have drinks around my laptop and desktop, and it hasn't happened to me even once in the last 20 years. In my opinion, the 1/1000 chance of a spill happening in a given year shouldn't guide your purchasing decision.

> Then there's the laptop screen, which is easily damaged when traveling.

How does this happen? Do you drop your laptop often? Do you take it to the beach and does it get full of sand? I always travel with a laptop and cannot picture the screen getting damaged, unless I place the laptop in checked baggage.

I had a mug handle break, shatter my trackpad and spill all over my keyboard. I now treat any mug with a level of distrust.

Others in the company always buys those paper thin laptops that can't be opened. They either break or get stolen. Not sure how they treat them. Mine is built like a tank and can hardly be called laptop. It mostly gets used with Anydesk from a desktop computer though it does follow nicely on trips for work now and then. Not a scratch on it.

My wife's MacBook was destroyed when a small cup of water was spilled on the other end of the coffee table. Apparently it was so thin that the water could flow right into the back vents. Sadly, we didn't realize it had been exposed, and turned it on the next day.

Not the OP, but I just lost a keyboard to a spilled drink as well. Not all of us have perfect dexterity and spatial awareness at all times.

I haven't lost a laptop screen to dropping it, though I have had a laptop screen spontaneously fail--two in fact. Both were HP laptops. Not buying those any more.

This reminds me of people who always forget their keys. I always thought: "nah that doesn't happen to anyone", and then I discovered it happens to a lot of people. Different brains work very differently, and there are some common bugs that affect some people but not others. See also those who can't stand watching a video to learn about a subject, versus those that can't stand reading. And that's even without getting started on personality disorders.

It's really hard to internalize it if you are not "weird" in any of those ways, but we should all be more aware of it.

Exactly. I spill drinks periodically, but I don't ever forget my keys.

I don't ever let them leave my pocket, of course, so I'd need to forget my pants to forget my keys...but we did agree not to get started on personality disorders. ;)

It's large laptop, 4.56 kg and a 17 inch screen. This makes it a bit bulky for carry on. I often check it in luggage, I take pains to wrap it to prevent damage, but I'm sure at least some has occurred when checked. Yes, I know it's fairly foolish to check a laptop, but for it's weight, it's a pain to lug around as carry on. This laptop has lasted about 4.5 years so far. So, I agree with the 1/1000 chance of a spill happening shouldn't really factor into purchasing decision.

Regarding spilled drinks, sometimes it's just been morning coffee, sometimes it's a beer late at night. I've only had one cup of coffee go into this laptop (apparently without damage as it was months ago), but I've taken out several external keyboards over the years.

Two more downsides I'd like to add to your list:

- A laptop will never have greater compute power and heat dissipation than a similar tier desktop.

- Current laptop models will often consume more power than can be provided by their included power supplies (one culprit is USB-C's 100 watt limit, the other is simply cost). Thus, their compute endurance is hampered by the battery. I see this when merely running Google Meet.

My first run-in with this was a customer that complained that their computer was slow. When I had a look at it, it was an HP laptop about 10 years ago. While booting I noticed a funny message in the direction of "For full capacity please buy this external power supply from HP". Looked at the power lump and it was about 60 W and the computer had a bad battery so could not keep up at all. They sell expensive laptops and expect you to throw away the power supply and buy a new one?

Yeah, I've seen it justified (by users) as "most of the time I don't need the full capacity and I don't want to pay for that extra capacity when the battery can make up for it".

A lot of assumptions wrapped up in such statements - one of which is the one you found: Batteries are typically among the first components to die.

I always used to unplug the battery when I'm not traveling so it would last longer. Can't do that any more if you need it the whole time.

Nowadays batteries are non-removable and sometimes even soldered in. I miss old laptops.

They still exist but you have to look for them specifically. Usually gaming laptops around 4 kg though :-)

1) My M1 MacBook begs to differ

2) My M1 MacBook begs to differ again

I feel like you are talking about laptops that should not have been laptops in the first place here

First off, I will say that yes, M1 chipsets are much more power efficient than intel based chips. However, this does not make intel based laptops "laptops that should not have been laptops", as evidenced by Apple (and everyone else) producing them for well over a decade.

1) Even with the thermal dissipation a M1 macbook has, a desktop could cool a M1 better. There's simply more room for a larger heatsink with more surface area, and fans that don't have to throttle, than a laptop format could ever provide And with the coming M1 desktops, we will see this in action.

2) The M1 MacBook Pro has a measured draw of ~120 watts under load (measured by anandtech; there's still the GPU to power, despite the better performance of the M1 itself). Apple power supplies, until recently, topped out at around 90 watts.

Here's where Apple's slightly ahead of the game - they're using the updated PD specs in their latest chargers to get a 140 watts out over USB-C, and packing them with the new 16" macbook pros (though not the 14", they're still topping out at 67/94 watts).

So the outlook for M1's in terms of power is better than average, so long as you pay the Apple tax. Worth it? Perhaps. Perfect? Not yet.

To be quite honest that sounds like you problems and not laptop problems.

I have never managed to spill anything on my MacBook and I travel 24/7 and it is in prime condition.

Speaking about condition, it seems to me like you really just have to condition yourself to not place any liquid near it and always keep it in a good protective bag.

Sounds like you need a thinkpad. New screens for my x220 are 40 bucks on aliexpress, a new keyboard is like 15. In addition, the keyboard has drainage holes, I use it routinely with dripping wet hands and the keyboard survived a coke spill + cleaning with flowing water.

Add to your list, Flexgate.

Macbooks have become notorious for industrial design faults that come up late in the lifetime of a laptop.

The main advantage of a desktop that you can't get from a laptop with a dock is that they can be a lot faster.

There isn't any laptop that gets anywhere close to a 64-core Threadripper on threaded workloads. There are some that are competitive with 8-core desktop processors, but then they cost ~twice as much.

But this only matters if you care about more than single thread performance.

> There isn't any laptop that gets anywhere close to a 64-core Threadripper on threaded workloads.

Challenge accepted.

https://www.mediaworkstations.net/systems/portable-amd-works...

It's also much easier and cheaper to build and repair a desktop in a normal tower with normal parts that you can get in the neighbour store when it breaks down at the worst possible moment (last week for example when the harddrive broke together... or the week before when the memory gave up and computer started crashing... Or last year when one of the other computers graphics card fan gave up) Open up, replace part, boot up and test. Back to work.

For a company it is often cheaper to give someone a replacement laptop than have them waste time fault finding.

"30-45 lbs"

If it needs wheels, it probably isn't a laptop!

> Some men see things as they are and ask why, I dream things that never were and ask why not

-- George Bernard Shaw

At 45 pounds, I would genuinely consider a rolling rack. My video mixer, using a Silverstone HTPC case, fits in a shorty 5U Gator case with room to spare for an audio interface and a power distributor.

If I understand correctly, your argument is laptops are better because they can do everything a desktop can and can be mobile? I can't follow this at all.

Mobility is a negative: so now your company can ask you to carry your laptop with you when you're on holiday, or ask you to complete work at the airport when traveling to the Denver office. And I feel like you missed GPs point about ergonomics -- you won't get any of that when moving. If you feel like mobile is a benefit WRT ergonomics you simply don't care about ergonomics.

The laptop form factor takes up extra desk space, and laptops are sill significantly more expensive for similar desktop performance.

Or maybe his work/life situation is different than you imagine? I’ve been working as a solo freelancer for the past 10 years and for the majority of that time I used a laptop connected to external monitor as my primary machine.

You get all the benefits of a desktop environment plus the convenience of being able to work remotely and carry your machine with you when needed.

I don’t have a company telling me to work from an airport. And as for ergonomics, you don’t get those with a desktop machine either when moving so I don’t see what different does that make.

A laptop offers you options. That’s why for some people is appealing.

This is how I do it, can't work without the external mouse, keyboard, and laptop stand. Haven't owned a desktop since 7 years.

I fully agree with this. I am a desktop holdout as well moving to my first laptop in decades in 2022

I think a lot of people would be better off buying a fast workstation and a very cheap laptop.

A workstation/desktop is way better for your posture and has more power for the money.

If you need to travel you can always use a cheap laptop to start a remote desktop session on the workstation.

But maybe this also depends on the kind of computing power you need. Personally I need an RTX GPU which saves me a huge amount of time. Those are just not available in laptops.

> I think a lot of people would be better off buying a fast workstation and a very cheap laptop[...]

This!

I'm currently in a hotel room using a cheap laptop (5-year old Lenovo 330) to connect remotely to my fast workstation (home-built Ryzen, lots of memory, lots of storage and LTO6 tape for backups). There's almost 1000mi between them but that's not stopping me doing anything I require. If someone steals the laptop, no big deal, buy another one. All I do is sign and and connect to remote stuff, pretty much nothing of value is stored locally.

"My home [PC] is my cloud", as Sir Edward Coke didn't quite say...

how do you connect to your pc? Through visual code plugin or something?

Tailscale and SSH work great here. I have a ryzen desktop in the office and all ports open in the VPN network, so it is easy to use whatever remote software is needed.

I personally just use vim over ssh.

Not GP but there are a number of remote control software. I'm using Anydesk on windows between laptop and desktop. SSH everywhere else.

Have mentioned this on HN before but I've done this for years, with OpenVPN to connect to my network and then SSH and XPRA for the actual remote X or terminal. On LAN I sometimes use a SPICE VDI. I don't care at all if I break or lose my disposable laptop and there's no data stored on it anyways.

I used to use a desktop workstation for the above, but after I got a rack server (running 24/7 with a bare-metal hypervisor) I'm finding I'm using the desktop less and less unless I require the GPU. If I was back in school now I would've forgone the desktop altogether and gone with a cheap laptop and a used server.

By the way, it's not just about performance. It's about the fact that your data is protected and secure, and you can have backups and redundancy in your private cloud instead of relying on a single laptop. Depending on how your remote access is set up you could even have a browser interface and thus be able to work on a borrowed machine or even on a public library computer.

I don't disagree with your overall sentiment but...

> a very cheap laptop

Overall I think the problem here is just how many things are tied to the price. Quality of screen, keyboard, battery, etc. If it's really only for occasional use, fine, but otherwise, it's probably still worth it to get a mid-ranged but competent laptop to complement the desktop/workstation. (It would be easy to devolve into each user's personal use cases here, on whether to prioritize screen, battery life, etc.)

> RTX GPU ... are just not available in laptops

This is not true, though I'm sure what you mean is "full wattage desktop-version RTX GPUs are not available in laptops." You can get up to a ~150W RTX 3080 in a laptop, plus there are a few "external GPU" solutions like the Asus ROG Flow Z13 which let you plug a desktop-class GPU into your laptop.

> Overall I think the problem here is just how many things are tied to the price. Quality of screen, keyboard, battery, etc.

The secret here is to get an old high end laptop. Then the screen and keyboard are good but the price is low.

That's exactly my approach, too :) Thin client laptop + GPU workstation in the basement.

Docker Image and Proxy are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30909178

That's typically how I go. Desktops for heavy lifting, something smaller for occasional portability when needed. In fairness, my current laptop wasn't cheap at around $950 for a then-current i7 processor, 16GB RAM, and nVidia GPU, but it's also 8 years old and still perfectly useful for what I need a laptop to do.

It's not just about saving money either. I just can't really get the performance in a laptop, but I occasionally need to be portable. Not too often, but sometimes. Desktop tends to get the budget and laptop gets the rest.

Have you considered one of those Thunderbolt-based external GPU enclosures? I've never had the money to play around with them, but have always been curious about how to integrate one into a setup. Theoretically, it would let you upgrade the laptop and GPU separately, while also making the GPU more readily available to be reused on some other machine.

It seems that younger generations just dismiss out of hand the idea of using anything besides a laptop. Probably just have no interest in building computers. My desktop is a workhorse. It's on 24/7. A BIG case with great airflow and nearly completely silent. I have a nice laptop that I use rather infrequently. Since all my work in on VMs, I can move my work to the laptop if I'll be using it for longer periods. But that hasn't been the case in a couple years now.

A lot of times it may be due to their experience with workstations. I didn’t really see a nice workstation until my first professional job at a newspaper. Before that it was all institutional grade Dells attached to budget peripherals. You could take a break after logging in while the computer got itself in a useable state. Their were some labs on campus that had better machines, but you generally had to have a reason to use them.

Meanwhile my core duo MacBook absolutely killed it.

Now, for personal use I’ve pretty much switched to a workstation that I built as a windows gaming machine, that accidentally works great as a coding and design machine as well.

Well it depends on your mood and period in life, as a fresh grad student, the first time I found a 12" thinkpad I was shocked. The small screen made me focus, the keyboard (x32 days) was slick as one can be.

These days my issue with laptop is the thermal constraints that cut off luxurious CPUs. Seeing a ryzen 5 sff pc gives you so much more oomph.. it makes the oversized toolchains invisible, no need to worry about VMs, large codebase recompile etc etc

While you and I prefer desktops, the market has undoubtedly proven the laptop's popularity.

I put up with the laptop, because I am highly-mobile and I can take it anywhere and work. I don't have to worry about copying files, or installing programs and libraries, because it's my main device. It's "up-to-date" and ready to go by default.

I code more, because I have my "main" computer with me virtually all the time.

That said, we all have different priorities and ways of working productively. While I find the keyboard and display a little cramped, it's good enough and well worth the overall benefits for me. And again, the laptop market seems to indicate this is true for the vast majority.

I solved this with NixOS: my home setup follows me at work and at home (desktops) and on my laptop. I change something in one machine and the change is one git pull away in the other machines.

I view using the laptop as a laptop as a fallback.

When I'm at an office location, I'll setup my mouse and keyboard just like I had a desktop. The laptop just becomes a smaller second screen with a keyboard for some reason. I have the same interface I would if I were to use a desktop, with the added bonus that I can bring a fully functional unit with me wherever I go.

Because, unless I'm going to always be at home, or only leave when I'm on vacation: I will need a portable work station. I could duplicate a setup on a laptop and a desktop, but I much prefer being able to simply fold my work (or gaming!) computer up and take it with me.

A friend just broke his ankle and has had people coming by to hang out and help out. No problem for me - I just packed up my work and my gaming laptops and drove over. Productive during the day, hanging out after work. The next day I went back to my full office setup with no fuss.

A big part of why I’m a remote is because I like to move around. I mean that in every way possible.

I start my day on a chair with a lap desk, move to my kitchen table, patio, back to office desk, etc.

Then I get tired of being home and walk downtown to drink a beer or have a coffee in a nice venue.

When I travel I can work in the airport during layovers. I get to go visit friends in other provinces for a few weeks without having to take time off from work.

If you don’t want to do those things that’s cool, but I do so I’ll never bother buying a desktop again

In 2019 I decided to build a desktop computer because of the price/performance advantage and the non-throttling advantage

Now in 2022, the M1 exists and I've gone back to a laptop. The gap between a desktop and a laptop computer is not there anymore, and even the price/performance ratio favors the laptop once you consider the price of a high-resolution screen.

Yep. I love the freedom and repairability of a custom built desktop, but until that desktop can magically appear at my sitting desk, standing desk, treadmill desk, and in the park, I'll be working on a laptop.

> I get to go visit friends in other provinces for a few weeks without having to take time off from work.

That sounds kind of miserable to me. Why would I want to work while visiting friends?

>That sounds kind of miserable to me. Why would I want to work while visiting friends?

Because there's still 16 other hours in a day you can spend with them and you don't have to feel pressure to do certain things because you've both taken time off work?

Do you have friends in your home town? Do you only visit them on days off of work?

I do have friends who I visit, yes. We generally get together for a long weekend, Thursday / Friday to Monday / Tuesday a few times a year. We all just take those days off work, because we're meeting up to hang out together.

No, I'm talking about friends who live in the same town as you do. I assume you can't see each other on weekdays for dinner or drinks since you're both working and that would be miserable, right?

If I get two vacation weeks off a year, I probably will use up one week on visiting family, another week on an interesting trip, and then that’s all the vacation for the year. If I want to visit friends as well, I just can’t. But if I can work while visiting friends, it’s strictly superior even if still a bit sad.

> Oppressive vendor practices aside, I just don't get the laptop fixation some people have, in general.

Different people have different perspectives born from different priorities, life experiences, and constraints.

> I find it extremely hard to be productive on a laptop; the form factor is entirely wrong for concentration. Small screen, mushy crappy keyboard with a bad layout, etc.

I prefer laptop keyboards to the extent that I've used them on desktop based machines for easily ten years. Same thing with touchpads. They work better for me, both in terms to typing accuracy and reduced hand pain.

Regarding the screen, it's a bit of a tradeoff. More screen space means more screen space to manage. (I recently went from three screens to two and don't miss the third screen at all.)

The counterpoint is that I find it hugely valuable to be able to move my computer around. I've had a few desktops over the last ten or fifteen years and the common element between them is that they're very difficult for me to fit into a longer term workflow and so never get used.

> But the worst thing about a laptop was while I was working from home there was just always the temptation to sluff off to a couch or bed and zone out.

That's less an issue with the hardware and more an issue with the habits formed around the hardware.

I still use a desktop for most things

What I have wanted for years was a small little portable desktop (sort of like those intel NUC's but larger and more powerful) that was basically using laptop like internals but designed more for speed, power, and efficient cooling. You could then pair that with a decent sized external monitor (like some kind of portable 21 or 24" 16:10 widescreen - maybe even one that folds) and a small, folding mechanical keyboard (I have preferred the 87 key layout for almost a decade now for everything). On that keyboard would be a mouse knub (like Thinkpads and many business laptops) and below the spacebar would be two mouse buttons (also like a Thinkpad) so that you can click with your thumbs.

This setup would be super efficient for real mobile workstation use. I have yet to find a system more efficient than the "eraser" mouse knub - you can type and use the mouth without ever moving your hands off the keyboard or the proper row AND you can easily click the mouse with your thumbs which makes for extremely fast transitioning between typing and mouse use. Once you get used to the knub it is actually very accurate (some laptops have much better implementations of this than others) - I would say up there with the best trackpads.

You could also take advantage of any and all screens you might come across while travelling - go to a friends house and they have a nice, larger TV? That becomes your second monitor. Etc etc. And with this keyboard setup you can also even sit on a touch and not have to deal with an awkward trackpad or mouse setup.

You could accomplish the same thing with a decent laptop but you would have a lot of extra space taken up by a keyboard you may not use often and a small screen you might use but not really want to use.

Alternatively I suppose a thicker laptop could be made with this type of keyboard integrated and it could also have some type of fancy fold out screen (similar to those new Samsung phones). I don't personally care how thick my laptop is or what the obsession is with thinness - storing and transporting a laptop (for myself at least) is always limited by the other physical dimensions. I do not also really care all that much about weight - most situations in which I would be carrying one I am not going to notice a huge difference between 5 pounds and 15. Although for backpacking of course (which is pretty niche) a light laptop would be nice.

I knew a guy that used to use a NUC as his primary work computer. He'd toss it in his bag if he decided he was going to work from home the next day or if he wanted to get some extra work done in the evening. They have plenty of power for anyone doing general webservice software engineering and they are more portable than a laptop.

That's one other reason why the steam deck is appealing to me. Small size, close to average desktop level performance (ballparking it on the fact that it runs AAA games well).

During travel I could bring it along in my carry bag, and an external monitor in a backpack.

I've also seen some nice portable&foldable bluetooth keyboards that have a trackpad on the side. Not a fan of the nubs.

Actually a very interesting idea - I wonder if there will be third party cooling plates like we see for laptops that can be used with the steam deck. Would be nice to have a nice secondary little passive/active thing you could place below it to make sure it stayed nice and cool for desktop use.

> Not a fan of the nubs.

I thought I was the only one. Now I know there's at least two of us!

I used a HP ProDresk (USFF) for that. Quite small, reasonably powerful, supports 3 monitors and linux-friendly (at least the i5-9500T Version I have).

Drawback is that it doesn't really take up much less space / weight than a small laptop and you always need external monitor + keyboard, which makes it much less portable.

Same. I get it if you are super mobile and need things that only a desktop OS can do. But I work at the same desk most days. I've had to work on a laptop and I hate it. If a job makes me I can deal with a clamshell laptop where the laptop is hidden away somewhere (but I can't deal with having a laptop keyboard / trackpad just sitting there unused, the laptop must be closed).

On top of that, even though I know that the traditional desktop OS metaphor was built on and for tiny low res screens--I just don't think Windows/GNOME/KDE/macOS/whatever work on screens smaller than 20" or so. A 12.9" iPad Pro is my main mobile computer and I mostly just use full-screen apps with very occasional split screen--and I think adding overlapping windows beyond a few widget-type things like QuickNote to iPadOD is a bad idea. Meanwhile, on a desktop I do the classic Mac tons of overlapping windows thing and the kinds of things I can't do on my iPad I wouldn't do on a laptop either (like, run a Plex server).

I mainly use a laptop, almost always hooked up to a monitor or two, keyboard and mouse. I have some beefy workstations available for computational stuff, but mostly easier to remote in or have an automation system send jobs there.

> but then it's just a desktop anyways.

So why not use a desktop? There are typically 3-4 distinct addresses I work at, and the value of just plugging in when I get there and having everything ready to go is high. I've tried basically every available approach to doing this with multiple workstations/desktops, and they all aren't as functional as just dragging my laptop between them...

As someone who’s young enough to have had a laptop during their teen years, a laptop feels more joyful to me, probably because of nostalgia. The family computer station docked in the living room was where my dad did taxes and cranked out spreadsheets. The laptop was the magic portal that I snuck down into the basement to look up game guides during al-nighters with friends. To this day, holding a laptop makes me feel like I’m about to to fun work, not just work work.

Also the keyboard on my MacBook feels way better than any keyboard I’ve tried (membrane or mechanical).

I always have a desktop computer and mostly can only do real work on desktop (graphics/VR/game programmer). Laptops are nice for portability so I always try to have one or two available. Because of my role my jobs have always provided one in the office, but I keep a personal one for gaming and side projects/learning.

I was right there with you until I started taking college courses again. With four kids, a wife, and a job, being able to knock out school work while talking to my wife or just spending quiet time near her has been a godsend.

This new laptop is the first one I've owned since going to school for my BS which I finished in 2012.

Yeah I think it depends a lot on the nature of the work. Writing documents and researching? Sure. Writing code? No thanks.

To each their own, I don't entirely agree. Some times, being limited to a single screen makes me more productive, since I don't have Slack or a web browser open or in sight to distract me. Especially when working on Jupyter notebooks, where everything in in-line -- no real need to for addition screen real-estate.

I used to have a personal laptop in the 2000s exactly for mindless web surfing in front of the TV. My mobile phone has now taken over that function though. So I just have a desktop for doing work and creative things and have never personally bought a laptop again (I do have a work supplied one). Also with multi-monitor set-ups now being inexpensive and all TV is available by streaming it's now reasonable to assign some screen space to watching TV on a desktop. So I spend less time on the couch.

It's a combination between desktops needing a lot of dedicated space, and younger people not having such space, because they're children living with their parents. Naturally, the youth will gravitate toward devices designed for limited private space (laptops and phones), then when those kids grow up they continue using what they know.

For me it's quite situational: I am able to get a beefy laptop that has a higher spec than the standard issue desktop, so I just use the laptop with docking stations at home and in the office. If I have to travel, I fall back to just the laptop.

For my personal use, however, I use a desktop.

So true. I'll add another: I don't want to travel with my main computer. It might get lost, stolen, confiscated, or broken.

For travel, I just get a cheap used laptop from the pawn shop, load it up with what I'll need for the trip, and don't worry about it.

It's not just about traveling outside: working in a different part of the house / apartment is trivial with a laptop.

This would be the perfect use case for a desktop paired with an iPad with keyboard, but the limited OS makes this unappealing.

Same here, exact same arguments as well, with the addition that if I'm buying the computer with my own money, I can get quite a bit more bang for buck on a desktop. Also they're easier to upgrade and expand.

I find it depressing to work in one place for long periods of time. Even if you give me the most ergonomic and high-end workstation, it would still make me less productive the more time I sit there.

I use a laptop cause I can't sit right for a desktop. I'm currently resting my laptop on my leg. I have my other leg tucked under that leg. The back of my chair is being used as an arm rest.

If this is a choice and you have the freedom to change, I suggest you focus now on ergonomic sitting habits. It will pay dividends later in life, and keep you out of the physical therapy office.

If this is not a choice, my apologies for being forward.

Not to mention the ergonomics of working at a laptop are so much worse than at a desktop.

and, dual/triple/quadruple monitor setups - once you go multi monitor, once can never be happy with a laptop.