Don't get a a laptop. The pc industry is doomed with phone envy. Desktop machines are one place you can really do better.
After 5-6 years of adoring a series of macbooks, I finally got fed up with Apple slowly locking down OSX. And if you're not willing to run OSX, then even the macbooks lose a lot of their luster.
If you run a desktop, though, then most everything pretty much works great (even with Linux). You can spec up to a giant monitor or multiple monitors, incredibly powerful graphics, CPUs with lots of cores (or even get two), and 64 or even 128GB RAM, or any combination of the above. Or you can build a compact, low-power system. And you can swap components in and out, buy upgrades, and sell/gift parts you don't need, etc.
I still have the laptop, but I only use that whenever I have to move around (and I use syncthing to keep everything synced continuously between them to make smooth transitions between them).
Everyone's got a laptop too, but they can now also VNC or SSH to their Linux machine if they need to work remote. Hell you can VNC into them from a chromebook.
I _do_ think it's interesting to think "maybe buying 1 (even 2) desktops is actually better for me than buying 1 laptop", but I cannot bring my desktop to the library. I feel like this comment is on the same level as "don't buy a phone, you can do better with a laptop", which is absurd on a similar level without extra context.
What do you do for a phone? What works for me is: 6"+ phone that does anything I'd use a 7" tablet for (smartwatch means I don't need to take it out my pocket as often), 11" ultrabook for doing things on the go, 18" "desktop replacement"/"gaming laptop"/"luggable" for home and the occasional longer trip or LAN party. (I do have a desktop/"home server" but these days it's pretty much an oversized NAS).
I used to think that. But then i got the hang of it and now I do most of my writings on my tablet
> What do you do for a phone?
I don't have the use case for an expensive phone or even a data plan. I have a low end smart phone ($70) that I use mostly for just texts and calls. Even my whatsapp is on my tablet (needs manual .apk as playstore won't let you do this).
I am at my desk most of the day (office), so all Internet related things I do on desktop. After work hours I have my tablet at home so don't really need my phone for much else. Have a desktop at home as well.
For me it just meant one less thing to carry (you could see it as less getting rid of the tablet and more buying a tablet that does phone calls so that I don't have to carry a phone around). Public transport especially is where a 6-7" device is really handy, but I don't want to be carrying more than I can fit in my pockets.
Isn't that an interesting bit of nuance that you so blithely elide.
Past that: it costs me three hundred dollars, round-trip, to fly from Logan to Reagan. Where does "thousands" come into it? Why would somebody who occasionally fly for business necessarily have the cash to burn on redundancies? Why would having that money imply that one should?
It is true that not every work load needs such a capable machine and you should only spend as much as you need.
That being said, I was working with a friend on a recent project and he told me that his MacBook was "burning up" while running through a build script that put together a a handful of Docker containers. My ~5 y/o Desktop barely even hiccuped on the same thing.
Desktops can do things laptops can't.
I was mostly responding to:
>Why would somebody who occasionally fly for business necessarily have the cash to burn on redundancies?
It wasn't clear to me that `somebody` was exclusivly referring to you.