I own a laptop which stays on my desk and never gets moved.
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2026
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Depends what I’m doing.
Working on a document? Sending emails? I can take my laptop wherever, do it in the park and make a nice day out of mundane tasks.
Gaming? Video editing? Nah I want my desktop. I’m fairly tall and hunching over a computer at a table isn’t very nice. I have it set up so I don’t fuck up my body sitting for hours at a time. I also have a 7 button ergonomic mouse that’s not very transportable.
I suppose docking a laptop is an option, but I typically buy laptops second hand so I can’t lose my more expensive hardware because I got stoned at the park and forgot it.
100% desktop, the ergonomics and economics are just way better. I still own a laptop, but it's decidedly a secondary device - most real work is getting done on my desktop.
I suspect that nowadays, a majority of people are getting most or even all of their computing done on a phone. Probably doesn't apply to the average Lemmy user, though.
I updated my body text to reflect your phone comments which i am guilty of. I hate shopping on it tho, thats more of a laptop thing for me.
Also i dont code on a phone its too annoying
TBH the main issue with phones for coding is that it's complicated or impossible on most phone models to connect a bigger screen, though it seems to become more common.
I think it would be better if it was standard for every app to have code folding implemented but all the mechanical concerns obviously still remain
Desktop.
I like laptops but if I'm using them for 'serious' work, they don't have enough ports, docking stations can get funky, 95% get way too toasty to keep your hands on, and the keyboard ergonomics usually suck. They're also harder to repair.
I want this but its so expensive 😭
PSP? Or is that one of those Steam thingies
Looks like GPD WIN 4, but it's last gen, and will probably remain out of stock.
The current one is GPD WIN 5, and starts at a modest $2250 USD. The screen seems fully stationary, so no keyboard, though.
The win 5 has no keyboard so i dont want that. If the 6 has one i consider buying...
What consoles can it emulate up to approx?
Its a gaming pc so it can do what a high end gaming pc can do
Desktop at home, laptop away from home.
Your post comes up at the most convenient time possible. I was using laptops for many years but recently the battery, the display, the power connector and the keyboard of my device got all partially defunct.
In total it is a mess now, so I think about buying a modern desktop again (the first one after 20 years). Are their parts still replaceable like in the past where it was easy? Or is enshittification a thing there aswell?
Even I was able to upgrade memory, the hard disc, drives, add new interfaces, a fan or the like. And for the inside cleaning with air pressure I just needed to loosen around four screws and everything was accessible.
Modern desktops are just as upgradable as ever, but now you can't buy the parts for anything close to a reasonable price because the slop machine bubble has consumed all the DRAM production capacity in the world (and that's barely even an exaggeration) and basically every other PC component is being gobbled up by datacentres as well. RAM, SSDs, mechanical HDDs, GPUs; all ludicrously expensive now, and CPU and mobo prices are creeping upwards too.
Oh no! I hope this will not affect me that much, because I usually do not buy new stuff anymore. Also I do not need that much powerful and/or modern stuff, so as long there is software which preserve still enjoyable compatibility and performance. I assume and hope almost everything for my average or even below-average use cases thats offline not on the web could run smoothly (in theory).
I don't have a desk job, but the past few days I've been inputting data on my laptop for a few hours a day, and my neck/shoulders hate it.
I would much prefer a desktop computer for ergonomic reasons, in this situation.
I feel like im the only adult without back pain haha
Give it time...
these days increasingly a pocket computer person
desktops all the way.
When my workplace switched from workstation desktops to lap tops was not a good day.
8 grand worth of fucking dell laptop with less ability than a 4 grand desktop. Doing something serious? Thermals say no.
The dell docks are a symphony of issues with multi monitors, network cable drop outs etc.
Oh you plugged another USB device in? Allow me to remind you that you are out of USB resources. Sorry, how would you like both mouse and track pad to cease functioning until you restart?
It is of course no lightweight either so actually taking it anywhere is a joke. Battery barely lasts 2h if you aren't plugged in. Also don't be thinking you can plug it in to just any dock, if it's a generic one, then it ain't getting enough power and it will tell you all about that, before doing weird shit if you try to share your screen in a teams meeting.
Plus taking it out of the office means connecting via a VPN which is slow as fuck and you can't do any real work over it anyway.
Also, using a laptop actually as a laptop? The ergonomics of that are not to my taste. Horrid keyboard right next to the screen. I can't stand it.
Old man here. Desktop only. Phone is for phone calls, GPS, and camera. Tablet for reading in bed, and light browsing.
I was a graphic designer, I used beast machines, packed with RAM and two big monitors. When I worked on 15GB Photoshop files under deadlines I needed a machine that could push pixels and a color corrected monitor. Never a laptop, obviously.
Also the laptop format is bad for me, because of my vision. I see best with glasses when the monitor is about four feet away, but of course I need the keyboard and mouse closer.
Yes
Work? Give me a laptop because I'm not always working from the same spot. External mouse, keyboard, monitor, and it's fine.
Personal? Desktop is better for games. Most things work on the phone. The remainder fan largely wait until I'm home.
At work I use a laptop because I change work locations multiple times a day.
At home I use a desktop because I like the bigger screen, better keyboard and more power for less than the cost of a laptop.
Midtier Laptop. Dock to a hub for dual monitors. Works good enough for gaming, just stick to retro and indie.
Laptop plugged into a screen, keyboard and mouse when at home.
The ergonomics of laptop use is terrible, but it’s very useful to just pick it up and take it with me when I need to be away from home.
I'm on a laptop, since I don't need the power of a desktop, and I like being able to use the same computer at home and on the go (e.g. school, and soon university!). I'm running EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma, and it's fantastic! My specific device is also one of those 2-in-1s (with a touchscreen OLED with amazing colours!) that can flip into a tablet, which is very handy. No plans to upgrade it any time soon, but the battery has degraded a lot (58% health), so it might need to be replaced soon.
Desktops make more sense for people who do more graphically intensive stuff (gaming, video editing, 3D modelling, etc.), and if you don't need the portability of a laptop, desktops are great since they are upgradeable, quieter, and full of I/O.
Laptop for work because of the flexibility. Desktop for gaming because of the storage, computing power, and more universal upgradibility.
I have both. The last time I turned the laptop on was probably a year or more ago. I just don't use it. I have a phone for portable computing and the desktop is a decently powerful gaming PC so it takes care of my Big Computer tasks with aplomb. And it plays video games. The wonders of modern Linux.
aplomb
There's a $150 worD
Yeah, I'm from a time before there was an internet.
Lord knows im glad to be a beneficiary of that
Depends. For gaming, desktop, for everything else, laptop.
Like you said, the laptop can move with me, so that’s a huge plus. If I don’t need the discrete graphics card, there’s very little reason for me to prefer a desktop at this point. Laptops have gotten so good in the past ~6 ~7 years.
My dream device is a 2-in-1 10-to-13-inch, fanless, RISC-based tablet with a magnetic keyboard and touchpad add on, running Linux.
I absolutely love portable, flexible, energy efficient devices. And I love not worrying about dirt getting inside. I'm perfectly fine with potential thermal throttling.
The closest I've ever gotten was Microsoft's Surface Pro X (SQ2). It was pretty much perfect, but couldn't run Linux. What a waste of a wonderful device.
Until then I guess it'll just be plain laptops. Would love to at least find a fanless laptop with decent performance.
So far the only things I came across are MacBooks Air (no, thanks), the PineBook Pro (which I owned, but performance is abysmal), and some Intel N-based Chromebooks, but most of the fanless ones use the older N100, or even worse, Celerons like the N4500, both of which offer even worse performance than the PineBook Pro.
Whats wron with the Framework or System 21 or whatevers?
Nothing, really. Just not an ideal device for me.
I was actually very interested in the Framework 12, but it's way too expensive for something that only matches around half of my criteria.
Where I live the lowest config - Core 3, 8GB RAM, 500GB SSD, no add-ons - is $1100 USD, which just makes no sense whatsoever.
Instead I could just get a refurbished ThinkPad X13 Gen 3 for $250 USD, which will be very similar, but smaller and lighter.
Frameworks are wonderful if you can afford them, and if they match your preferences.
No?
I run virtual sessions from my local server, my VPS, and my laptops and desktops on whichever device I’m closest to. Sometimes that’s a phone and keyboard.
And I’ll often have a laptop open with nothing running other than VNC and RDP sessions to non-laptop devices.
And this doesn’t even get in to virtual machines, which I run on everything but the phones.
How does one know or arrive at the conclusion that one needs a virtual machine?
In many different ways. I need to test things in different environments and in the past have helped develop virtualization tech, so it’s a no-brainer for me.
Someone who has two computers so they can run two different OSes? Next time they upgrade, they may want to consider virtual machines on a single computer instead.
Do anything related to hosting, computer security, systems development or tweaking that affects the entire OS in a way that may not be compatible with other things you do? Virtual Machines help containerize what you’re doing.
Virtual machines also allow you to set full system snapshots so you can roll back to known good configurations.
Running a suite of services in Docker images means you can migrate them anywhere with no reconfiguration needed; to the client system, nothing changes.
This also means I’m still able to run the same environment I’ve been using for the past 20 years, but locked down so that I don’t have to worry about security issues as much; I do the same video and photo editing I did 20 years ago, so why not use a familiar and dependable interface to do it?
Want to play that game you bought in 2001? It might not run on Windows 11 or macOS 27, but it’ll fly on TinyXP on modern hardware.
I’m a neither type of person. I haven’t used a PC in close to six years.
Laptop for same reasons as you, but I actually also like the touchpad, because it's right below the keyboard, so less travel distance for the hand and you don't lose your place on the keyboard so much.
Yes, touchpad is bad for certain things, but I mostly use a keyboard-driven workflow anyways, so that remedies a lot of that and makes being closer to the keyboard doubly important...