So I don't have a working laptop, I had a couple in the past that were overheating, hard to un-dust, hardly fixable, and it was sitting always in the same spot, maybe except for when I had to go to holiday for a couple of weeks a year and wanted something to kill time.
Since then I have only bought desktops, and keep a low-power tablet/laptop for emergency, so what I wanted to ask people that still use laptops as primary machines, what's the reason why you guys buy those overexpensive, unfixable, limited machines even if like never going to work anywhere?
Of course everyone does whatever he wants, it is just a matter of curiousity for me, to understand if it's like the result of marketing or there's some reason I fail to see behind the popularity of laptops
obviously space. I don't even know where I'd put a desktop.
silence. I am not a fan of fans. I have a relatively "under-powered" CPU/GPU which is good enough. I am not a gamer. Although I'd love to have a 64GB+ RAM laptop, an ultra-thick AMD gaming laptop won't work for me. Liquid cooling is not in my future.
flexible small thin devices. Plug and play. Our computing experience is not limited to a solitary grey box. Our phones, laptops, and small board computers (ie. raspberry pi) are still running after decades in some cases. A hardware "upgrade" is plugging in monitors, mice, keyboards, and other cabled/wireless devices into other various devices. I don't have to take apart a dusty grey box in order to swap things around.
Cost-effectiveness over time. I buy a good laptop maybe once a decade. If I upgrade it at all, it will only be to enlarge the storage capacity. My philosophy there is like my cars: "Buy twice as good and buy half as many". I keep my cars for over 10 years too.
Like you, my main machine is a desktop. But I have to have a machine always with me for business because I never know when it might be needed.
I like to see what I'm working on. Looking at tiny phone or laptop screens feels like I'm doing keyhole surgery. A laptop is good for travel, but it's really just a substitute for a good desktop.
I have a personal desktop for the power-per-price, upgradeability, and repairability reasons. I have a couple of personal laptops in different rooms, because sometimes I want a computer somewhere besides hidden in the office. I don't have a tablet that I use; touchscreens always make me wish for a mouse+keyboard.
If that's the way you work, then maybe a laptop doesn't make sense. For me, I routine work from different locations in my home, and/or work from a nearby B&N Cafe. So portability is actually a requirement for me.
If was going to have a home machine that didn't need to move around, then I'd probably build/buy a desktop machine for that.
I have a desktop, it takes up space but it's faster and I've a very large screen. There have been several times I've wanted to work from the sofa but I don't think it'd be as productive.
For me, I am frequently mobile, meaning I don't sit in one spot all the time. Having a powerful laptop as my primary makes perfect sense in that case.