Window Computers - Laptop vs. Desktop

[OMB]

For the last four plus years I have been running a Lenovo Windows 10 Desktop PC. Prior to that all were laptops (notebooks) that eventually slowed down to a crawl prior to final demise. I was convinced that a laptop was the way to go. I still have a couple Chromebooks running in the house and really like those but my main computer is the Desktop. Hope this won't jinx me but I have been pretty impressed with the reliability overall. It has from day one had a funky issue upon start up from off that required unplugging and holding down the power button for 30 secs to discharge static electricity but most of the time I just do a restart for an update and mostly leave it on.

But I do wonder from time to time if I will stay with a desktop or next go round return to a laptop form.

So that being said maybe ya'll can weigh in on your personal preference.

[ILuvTeles]

I need a laptop for work

[Chocol8]

Laptop if you need and will use portability. If not, or if you want extra horse power, upgradability, or special capabilities, desktops win.

Places I would strongly consider a desktop would be gaming, especially flight sims, and significant video and audio editing. Also, If you use multiple large monitors, sure, you can use a laptop with a dock, but if you are tied to the dock, does the laptop still make sense?

Ultimately, the best solution may be multiple devices. Maybe a tablet, chrome book, or full laptop for mobility, and a desktop workstation for your home studio, or gaming rig.

[mozz]

Most all laptops I've had in the past 20 years the battery eventually would stop holding a charge. They still work though. Last time i turned on a Vista laptop it was pathetically slow so that ended up getting formatted and reinstalled. I do use them for my cnc winder and USB oscilloscope.

Desktops to me are great, though you have to blow the dust out of them yearly and are much cheaper to upgrade memory, video cards, etc. I no longer buy anything Dell, HP, due to all the bloatware and they only let you use proprietary hardware to upgrade. Fark that.

[OMB]

Most all laptops I've had in the past 20 years the battery eventually would stop holding a charge. They still work though. Last time i turned on a Vista laptop it was pathetically slow so that ended up getting formatted and reinstalled. I do use them for my cnc winder and USB oscilloscope.

Desktops to me are great, though you have to blow the dust out of them yearly and are much cheaper to upgrade memory, video cards, etc. I no longer buy anything Dell, HP, due to all the bloatware and they only let you use proprietary hardware to upgrade. Fark that.

Prior to purchasing my Lenovo I had been a pretty dedicated HP Laptop customer. I got (2) defective HP Desktops in a row so I lost the faith in HP. I have known folks that had a high degree of variability with Dell computers so they were never in contention.

[PoodlesAgain]

There is a certain amount of comfort to a desktop that balances against the laptop portability.

Fragility: One my laptop "p" key internals died... and that was the one machine with lighted keyboard. Grr...

[fullonshred]

Most all laptops I've had in the past 20 years the battery eventually would stop holding a charge. They still work though. Last time i turned on a Vista laptop it was pathetically slow so that ended up getting formatted and reinstalled. I do use them for my cnc winder and USB oscilloscope.

Desktops to me are great, though you have to blow the dust out of them yearly and are much cheaper to upgrade memory, video cards, etc. I no longer buy anything Dell, HP, due to all the bloatware and they only let you use proprietary hardware to upgrade. Fark that.

I agree about desktops, I much prefer them whenever possible. I dislike small screens.

In the past I have had little problem buying a Dell/HP/EMachines (Whut?!?!!?) and upgrading them multiple times in multiple ways. For years I could buy a major brand as a base platform for upgrades considerably cheaper than I could buy the parts alone. I have seen where some manufacturers are going to soldered in CPU and memory over the past few years, but parts are cheap enough now I can usually buy and build.

I built one of my AMD/Ryzen desktops in an old emachines case that originally housed an intel celeron with 512mb of system memory and ran Vista Home Basic. Over the years I upgraded that Desktop multiple times until I maxed out memory. Did a BIOS Cross flash from a stock intel board that let me drop in an intel core 2 duo E4600 dual core cpu. Did that on three of these same model emachines and 1 of them still runs in that same config at my house today.

The emachines case I used for my 1st Ryzen build now houses a Ryzen 1600 6 core/12 thread cpu, 16gb of ddr4 3200mhz memory and an old GTX1060 graphics card I have used in several systems. It is my bedroom computer hooked up to a 50" 1080p HDTV.

[mozz]

Prior to purchasing my Lenovo I had been a pretty dedicated HP Laptop customer. I got (2) defective HP Desktops in a row so I lost the faith in HP. I have known folks that had a high degree of variability with Dell computers so they were never in contention.

I think we have 3 Lenovos floating around here. Seemed like the best bang for the buck at the time. Same with Motorola phones, had enough of the Samsung overpriced phones and the Motorolas are doing great so far.

[bleys21]

I have both, but the laptop is only for remote work, like programming switches, working in a datacenter where I need a workstation and there are none, etc. My main workhorse is a full tower desktop... fast, lots of memory, kick-ass video card, and lots of space. Only negative is hauling it out to the garage to blow the dust out, as she's rather hefty

[Tonray's Ghost]

Every 4 years or so I pick up a Dell Latitude Business class refurb unit. Currently using a Latitude e6440 with a Core I-5 CPU which I bought in 2017. Only upgrade I did was throw a Samsung SSD in last year. Still just like new....These are high end machines, built like a tank that Dell leases to business customers for 3 years and then sells after refurb. Most are in very good condition and they rate them cosmetically of you care about that. About 4 times a year, Dell refurb offer these 40 or 50% off deals to clear inventory for the next wave coming off lease. So I paid about $400 for mine which 3 years earlier sold for about $1200....if you're looking for solid construction (built like a tank) and great value....Dell Refurb.

[uwmcscott]

I prefer both - a destkop for my main workstation and a laptop when I'm working offsite. I've been doing the laptop/docking station thing for a while with my work device, and that works pretty well too. But I still run into occasional issues with multiple displays and docking stations.

For my personal devices Dell refurbs have always been a good bang for your buck for me as well.

[Gear_Junky]

I like modularity and ease of part replacement (it's not impossible on laptops, but more hassle). A desktop will run for a decade or more and the only think likely to fail on it is power supply. I've replaced my share - just bring the old one to Micro Center and find a similar one that'll fit. Hard drives can fail, so back up your data.

I also had a laptop that I got for just video watching around the house before tablets became ubiquitous and yes, for some reason it also slowed down and became unusable, even though it turns on. Not the battery, it does this when plugged in.

I've probably had my LCD desktop monitor for 15 years. When buying any laptop, it will either cost more on the same specs or have inferior specs to a desktop. My job provides a laptop, so that's what I work on. Of course, these days the hardware is so fast and powerful that software devs allow themselves to be sloppy because they have so much computing resources available to them.

[Flatline]

I have both. Prefer the desktop unless I need to be portable.

[OMB]

I am quite surprised to see so many folks still using desktops. The price differential between a notebook and a desktop has narrowed considerably for quite sometime now. But like me when I worked many have laptops provided by the company or portability is a requirement to do your job. I have found the combination of a Windows desktop PC and a Chromebook to be pretty ideal. Since getting a Chromebook I no longer have any use for my tablet. My Chromebook is an 11" Acer with a touch screen that folds over and can be used as a tablet if so desired but I am more of a KB guy versus a touchscreen.

For years prior to getting a desktop I plugged my laptops in to a monitor, keyboard and external mouse. It allowed for portability but also kept me from wearing out the keyboards have a bigger screen to view and a much better interface with a mouse versus a trackpad (I hate those). So maybe my set up ain't half bad.

[Chocol8]

If your laptops are getting slow, clean off the HD, back it up and do a reinstall of Windows. Better yet, get a SSD replacement hard drive. A fast hard drive with a fresh clean windows install will usually speed things up significantly.

[LancerTheGreat]

I've got both, just kinda use the laptop if I travel or go stay anywhere for a night or more, or if the lady's watching something in the living room, I'll step around to our "office" and use my laptop.
I guess I keep my laptop more setup for gaming and the desktop more for HTPC service and exclusively games with controller support, I just haven't found a comfortable and convenient way to use kb+m from the couch.

I haven't really met a tablet or chromebook/netbook that I've liked and now I don't have any reason to even try anything that lol.

[fullonshred]

I also had a laptop that I got for just video watching around the house before tablets became ubiquitous and yes, for some reason it also slowed down and became unusable, even though it turns on. Not the battery, it does this when plugged in.

I assume you have run CCleaner or Gary Utilities to clean out all the cookies and standard junk files (not the registry stuff though!) on a regular basis? And if not an SSD as the sytem drive then used a good defrag program? It is SHOCKING how much faster some computers run after a few simple maintenance steps like that.

I had a friend bring me her laptop that uses a standard hard drive for the System Drive. It was nearly unbootable. Cleaned cookies and then DL'd a defrag program that will defrag and then move system files to the faster part of the hard disk. The damn thing was something like 45% fragmented. Took hours to defrag and optimize. Ran pretty much like new after that.

Having a system drive too Full will also slow some down very badly.

You probably already know and have done all this, but maybe someone here didn't know this stuff yet. Hence this post.

[Gear_Junky]

Yep, I'm aware of all that, but what a drag! I haven't done that on my desktop that I've had for 10 years and it's fine.

[OMB]

If your laptops are getting slow, clean off the HD, back it up and do a reinstall of Windows. Better yet, get a SSD replacement hard drive. A fast hard drive with a fresh clean windows install will usually speed things up significantly.

I used to do that with all my laptops but twice ran into some issues with reinstalling Windows and when I called Microsoft got some tech guy in India that bricked my laptops. He basically shrugged over the phone and I had to go get a replacement unit so that kind of soured me on that process. My next PC will probably have a SSD for the OS and a HDD or just a SSD. The speed difference is pretty amazing.

[OMB]

Have to be careful not to defrag a SSD. Mucks it up.

[Gear_Junky]

Have to be careful not to defrag a SSD. Mucks it up.

THIS I didn't know. Thank you. But then I don't have any SSD systems yet.

[PoodlesAgain]

Have to be careful not to defrag a SSD. Mucks it up.

I seem to have read that the better/best models have onboard tech to work around things like frequent global rewrites, like fresh installs and the like?

Other: I did not keep a eye on desktop tech, what's up with liquid cooling and stuff?
Just for advanced gamers?
You would think modern chips would be more efficient, requiring less heat dissipation?

[KoniKat]

I like both. Usually when I'm not on my desktop, I use my laptop to connect to my desktop, which works as a server as well. My laptop is pretty meh in its specs but it works fine with Arch Linux installed and I use it when I commuted to school before the whole covid thing. I prefer a desktop just for gaming, like my current desktop.

[MichaelR]

I don't own a laptop. I used to have one but rarely used it. If I had a job which required it I would own one but still use my desktop for everything not job related i'm sure.

[fullonshred]

Have to be careful not to defrag a SSD. Mucks it up.

I seem to have read that the better/best models have onboard tech to work around things like frequent global rewrites, like fresh installs and the like?

Other: I did not keep a eye on desktop tech, what's up with liquid cooling and stuff?
Just for advanced gamers?
You would think modern chips would be more efficient, requiring less heat dissipation?

You are correct. Wear Leveling. I have found SSDs to be far more robust wrt rewrites etc than was originally believed. I think this is maybe the consensus experience as well.

Liquid Cooling is much more widespread now, but generally necessary only for over-clockers/benchmark enthusiasts and/or other special situations. Gaming could be one of them.