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Comment by ashtonkem | Hacker News Reader

I still remained baffled by the popularity of the laptop. Literally everyone I know works with them fixed in one location; their desk. Yes, some people do need mobility, but this appears to be a minority of consumers. We could’ve had all this repairability and modularity years ago if most consumers just admitted that really they wanted a desktop all along.

It also fixed complaints about keyboards.

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Even when I'm home 90% of the time during COVID, I use my laptop in lots of places: my desk, my bed, my dining table, my kitchen counter, my couch. I can't drag my desktop setup all around my apartment like that.

It makes sense if you use the laptop as a desktop - plugging it to a bigger monitor with an external keyboard and mouse. Otherwise it's hard to have good ergonomic with a laptop and you can't work long hours on it without developing some body pain.

What kind of pains does a laptop cause that you wouldn't also experience on a desktop?

Forward head, rounded shoulders.

I don’t use my laptop in any of those places because my desktop setup isn’t there. Laptop keyboards are awful to type on, why put yourself through that?

I’d rather get my work done at the desk and then enjoy my hammock or couch without the computer, preferably with a good book.

If I'm using it in the kitchen, it's probably to read a recipe or watch a video, neither of which is a keyboard-intensive task.

Literally everybody in my company (a large enterprise) uses a laptop as their main workstation. They work with them docked at their desks, but then unplug them to take them to a meeting room, a shared working space, etc.

Outside of work, 90% of people I know have a laptop as their main computing device at home. Very few have a desktop PC - those are the PC gamers.

Your anecdotal experience doesn't match with my anecdotal experience.

My anecdotal experience matches yours. I work for a smallish business in an active growth phase, and the onboarding process for every employee starts with "Welcome to the company, here's your laptop."

Right, which doesn’t actually contradict what I said in any way. I did not say that companies are giving out desktops, genuinely not sure why everyone is pretending to the contrary.

Really? This has maintained true for you even during the pandemic?

I don't know a single person who uses their laptop in one place. Hell, every one of my co-workers has been at home or in the office with their machine at least a couple times over the past month.

Yes. It has maintained true for me throughout the entire pandemic.

Laptop ergonomics are catastrophically bad. Doing any meaningful work on them for any length of time without my keyboard, monitor, and mouse just plain sucks, so I don’t do it.

My personal machines (gaming and non) are both desktops. I’ve never wanted to move them, and they cost me a fraction of what an equivalent laptop would have.

I agree about the ergonomics, but most of us I believe have docks at home and work.

I keep my personal computer at my desk in my apartment almost all of the time, and for the past decade have used a desktop since I pretty much never needed to move it. But over that decade with a desktop, I found myself wanting - craving - the ability to easily take my computer on trips, or into the living room from time to time, etc. Not a lot of movement, but the possibility for it. But the concept of having files/projects split over a desktop AND a laptop seemed to be a hassle. And syncing seemed to be a not-so-ideal situation (possibly hard to set up, or requiring a paid service, or not reliable, etc). The best solution I found was a dockable laptop setup. I've now been using a dockable laptop setup for almost a year and I honestly can't imagine ever going back.

The only other solution I could envision I'd be happy with is one that doesn't exist: where I have a processor and storage "core" that I can use in a variety of dumb terminals. That's my real dream, but a dockable laptop is kind of similar.

I have a laptop plugged into a dock, from which it basically never moves. If it was a desktop nothing would change.

The one thing I want to do in a mobile fashion is take notes and do zoom meetings, a need that my iPad meets handily.

Well OK but now you're already not comparing laptops to desktops, you're comparing laptops to desktop+iPad.

I could do without the iPad and use my phone, I just coincidentally have an iPad I inherited. I will not be buying another iPad once it dies, nor will my next personal computer be a laptop.

The funny thing is that the laptop is actually incapable of doing the one thing I would reasonably want it to do: work outside. It overheats within 5 minutes and slows to a halt if I dare let the sun hit it. Both the iPad and iPhone handle this task easily, weirdly enough.

And this is really the issue I have with laptops; they try to be everything to everyone and they end up sucking at any given one task as a result. Compared to my Mac mini my MBP is expensive and underpowered with compromised ergonomics and thermals. Compared to my iPad my laptop has poor battery life, weighs a ton, and overheats in the sun. All that buying a MBP has done is waste $2k extra of $CORPs money, and produce a bit more e-waste given the short upgrade cycle they have me on.

You must be out of touch. In the last 20 or so years of work (~8 employers), I have never had a desktop as a primary work machine (I've had desktops as a secondary machine). My primary personal machine has also been a laptop in that time frame.

What? I finally switched from a desktop battlestation PC at work and at home to a high-powered gaming/compute laptop that I dock at work/home in my 3x monitor setup with mechanical keyboards and such at each location - and I'm a 1990's LAN party, lug your giant tower to the basement of your buddy's place nerd.

I was really late to switch and I don't regret it at all. Almost everyone I know made this switch 5+ years ago before me.

I also needed a laptop anyway with the battlestations, because I travel for work. Now it's all in one package and I spent a lot less money on it.

I'm not sure how common it is, but at my old job devs and business analysts would regularly go on site to work with clients. Larger teams would have build boxes for CI and VMs that we could remote into if need be, but other than that laptops were absolutely required.

I'm currently writing this at a coffee shop surrounded by others all working on various things. I really like the option to work from anywhere.

My experience is that everyone claims they want the ability to go to a coffee shop, but very few actually exercise it. Obviously some will, like you, but not most. And unfortunately the perception of need drives behavior more strongly than actual need. Same with “off road” vehicles and trucks, people buy things based on capability they’ll never exercise.

Personally I loved the idea of working from a coffee shop until I actually tried it. Then I found that the glamour of the idea was much more than the experience of trying to do focused work in a noisy environment on a cramped keyboard. So instead I do work in my office, and leave my laptop permanently closed and connected like the worlds most expensive Mac Mini.

Carrying to meetings to be productive or stare at Zombo (back when meetings were in person). Some of my co-workers have a hybrid schedule and work won't give us two machines. Getting things done while attending conferences (if those happen again).

Even if you mostly work at your desk, a desktop computer has just no option for mobility if you ever want to work somewhere else temporarily. It seems like many people value the option of mobility, even if they don't use it often.

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