I know, I know, all I'm saying is that a laptop now better suits my needs and I am ultra happy with it, different horses for different courses......................
Yep - I reckon I have the answer to this one...
...both.
Similar to the analogy from Chas, I feel it's like comparing a FIAT Tipo to a FIAT Croma (both the same age). The Tipo is a bit more 'modern' but ultimately the Croma is faster and more spacious, and (I reckon) has better handling with the more expensively-engineered suspension. At least, the back end doesn't bob up and down when you use the handbrake! If you can afford to, you may as well drive both.
I have a Compaq laptop that I bought new late last year. It was half the price of my desktop machine.
However, the laptop is slow to start up, has an older version of windows, periodically has an unexplained delay, the graphics are a bit slow to redraw sometimes, and the hard disk (4200RPM) is slow. It seems that the 1.8GHz Sempron is more like 800MHz. The 14" screen feels tiny and is highly reflective, so difficult to see, and too dim for outdoor use. On the bright side the battery life is a relatively-good three hours, and I can now take my documents with me to show my clients.
Laptops get hot. I wouldn't like to use one for long periods - something would give eventually, better hope there's a warranty.
You can't get the same graphics-card power in a laptop as you can in a desktop. It's simply not practical to have large coolers/heatsinks and the battery life would be hopeless. I've yet to see a laptop where you could upgrade the graphics card. There's probably a market for external graphics cards - if any port had enough bandwidth for that.
My desktop is having some problems with the Windows Vista Start menu - ALL the first-level program icons don't work. This is a pretty minor annoyance. But my previous desktop system ran for five years (yes, five years!) on the one install of Windows XP. Can't complain at that level of reliability! System Restore is my favourite feature - it has cleared up spyware several times for me, because sometimes I just know when I'm about to get spyware - when I'm about to visit dodgy sites... I create a restore point first!
The 120GB hard drive (big $$$ in 2002) lives on in an external case, and the rest of the system was reinstalled with Windows 2000 on a smaller drive and sold for $300.
Moral: it's worth paying more for your desktop, as you get more life out of it and it still has some residual value after five years. I'm not so sure about my laptop, as cheap laptops are slower than cheap desktops to begin with... it will probably need upgrading several times in three years to cope with Office 2009 or whatever.
...but if you can afford a nice laptop, then you may as well go for it
-Alex
