What laptop do you have?

[Armxnian]

 <rant>
I used to be a desktop enthusiast, until about 5 minutes ago, when I realized they're pretty much useless.

You can get a laptop that is close enough in performance to a desktop. A general desktop in the current age isn't orders of magnitude better than a general laptop. Plus portability, which you can't beat for school or work. You can add peripherals like mouse and keyboards and use external monitors for better productivity. Honestly unless you're doing 24/7 video encoding you should have a laptop. And at that point you shouldn't have a desktop, you should have a xeon workstation/server. The only other purpose I see is gaming, but we won't talk about that, because this is an intellectual forum, and anyone who games for the majority of their time most likely has zero intelligence.

Overclocking is out of the question. Leads to instability if anything. I don't understand how you validate such a complex cpu by running a program written by a kid in his basement. You need actual test equipment for this. These days, they recommend to not even run prime95 as it "draws too much current"...

My current desktop which cost 3 grand in parts can't even boot UEFI linux. What a piece of garbage.
 </rant>

The powerhouse laptops seem like a good value. You can get one that has better specs than an ultrabook for $1000 less. But I don't really want those, as they're bulky, loud, burn your lap/desk and have 2 hours of battery life. I don't want a $300 piece of crap that isn't even x86-64. I think ultrabooks are what to get, even though they get costly really fast.

Apple? I pretty much hate the company, but must admit they have quality laptops. HP consumer products are just trash. Dell seems pretty good. Surface book seems good, but it's overpriced. Would prefer to stay away from the generic lenovo/toshiba stuff as their build quality will probably will probably make my skin crawl after building high end watercooled desktops for 5 years.

Recommendations please? Excuse my passive-aggressive tone. I'm pissed, as I've been trying for a week and failing to boot UEFI linux with my poor excuse of a motherboard from asus. So what do you have and what should I get? Don't care about price, but I must warn, I am extremely picky when it comes to computers.

[Srbel]

I have old, shitty quality Toshiba Satellite A210-133. The mechanical quality is a disgrace. After opening it up for like 3 or so times, it is falling apart. Half of the plastic "things" that hold threads for screws to screw in have broken. Both screen folding cast metal brackets are broken (if you can call this pathetic excuse of a metal - a metal). Plastic is shitty quality, brakes off. It is held together by superglue now. For more than a year. Can not open it up any more...

P.S. I run Ubuntu 12.04.x on it. Much, much better than any Windows bollocks.

[rdl]

If you need a small, lightweight and portable computer, then a laptop is definitely the way to go, but a desktop PC is far better in almost every other way.

[MrSlack]

Desktops are nice but they aren't as useful as they used to be.

Lenovo X201. Intel i5. 8Gb RAM. 512Gb Samsung 840 Pro SSD. 9 cell battery. Running windows 8.1 pro. Nice machines with proper keyboards and a trackpoint even if older than your average machine, impossible to break and I get 7 hours of battery life. Main thing is it's small enough to sling in my bag or in the shelf in my car. Have a car charger for it so I'm unlimited range really. This gets tethered to a Moto G3 via 4G when I'm on the road.

I have spent literally bugger all on all of that. All came from eBay/Amazon. I think I paid 100GBP for the laptop and added the RAM, disk and bought a genuine second hand battery with 95% capacity. Phone was the only new bit and thst cost about 130GBP.

This is just a dumb terminal really. I use it to SSH into my "desktop" which is a stacked HP DL380g8 server running CentOS 7. That and Google Apps is where the business takes place.

Day job is solution architect for ref.

Edit: just to add, I don't keep that X201 in a case; it lives in the back of the sofa and gets carried around loose in my bag. I knocked a glass of water in it and dropped it from the table and hand height onto hard surfaces several times and my toddler jumped on it. Just eats it every time. I bought a spare one in case I broke it and it has been in the cupboard for 2 years now. The headphone socket wore out on it and it was on a daughter board that cost me 6GBP to replace (eBay)

[Monittosan]

Lenovo X220 tablet my 2nd one with 250gb ssd and 8gb ram. Like above only a core i5 but pretty dam good in every other aspect.
The Lcd is showing its age resolution wise!

[MrSlack]

Yeah display on mine is only 1280x800 but after going from two 20" displays to this, I find it's much better for the eyes and neck.

I use tmux inside putty and chrome mainly and they are both tabbed interfaces so this isn't a major problem.

I do have a docking station with a 17" TFT connected to it but I haven't used it for about a year now.

[HighVoltage]

I only buy used Lenovo laptops.

The one that I am using constantly is the W520
They call it "W" for workstation and it really is a workhorse
Running CAD and EDA software on it is faster than on my real workstation.

[tszaboo]

Lenovo X220. The last of it's kind. Managed to score one, which wasn't used at all. Only if it would have a slightly better screen.

[Mechatrommer]

...but a desktop PC is far better in almost every other way.

the OP said his PC is useless all this while, i'm not sure what he was doing. he certainly doesnt need features of a PC workhorse thats unavailable in laptop... if the keyboard screwed, everything screwed. same as monitor, display board, smps psu charger etc or at least you need to pay premium for a month service repair... newer technology means buy another one. limited memory/pci-ex slots, unable more than one SDD/HDD for separate data, ie if main OS physical HDD/SDD gone, the data in the other partition also gone.. not that serious if the data are only piles of selfies and few dso capture screen ready for eevblog upload.. laptop means danggling wires everywhere even for simple matters like multicard readers and DVD writers. most productivity tools like my bunches of printers here are Windows only, many danggling wires here if i dont manage properly behind my bench. i can go on and on but i dont think they will get it because they are truly generation X... for me... a 27" monitor, a full old qwerty keyboard and a WinXP is all it takes because i'm too old to remember another location for "Del, Home, End, Page Up, Page Down" to code quickly without looking...

[_Andrew_]

For laptops for a while now I have been using Lenovo, generally reliable and have taken abuse to the point where bits are falling out but still going.

You do have to watch out for the clandestine snooping lenovo have got in to trouble for. eg supper fish and bios that automatically calls on reinstalling lenovo's dodgy bits of software even with a clean install of the os.

Since being cought with there pants down lenovo have released removal tools and new bios versions to address these isues but it is left to you to go and check as to whether your hardware is affected.

I also use desktop systems too but these are ones I build up my self as I find that I can get more performance per £. I already have stock of the os and software licenseing I require so don't like paying for the bundled software that usually comes with a turn key system and never use.

I do tend to avoid using AMD as I have had odd spurious problems with instability with software and hardware configurations that don't occure when using Intel baced systems. Never taken the time to dig in to why there is this difrence. At the end of the day I need it to work and don't have the time to mess about bug fixing what should just work.

I no longer use nvidia chip sets / graphics cards in desk top systems. Every time I have they have failed, problems often with BGA's and bad caps.

Dell once used to be good machines then after the Latitude D series they seemed to have dived off a cliff with cost, build and bazaar odd glitches.

For OS I have one that runs Win 10 (not happy with 10 but better than 8.0, 8.1) but most systems I have run win 7.

[GreyWoolfe]

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 3520.  I5 processor with 4 Gb ram. I don't know the hard drive size.  Mostly used for EEVBlog reading and Netflix while winding down in bed at night.  Also use it to program Handi-talkies for club members

[AlxDroidDev]

Dell XPS 15 L502X.
Core i7-2670QM, 16Gb RAM DDR3-1600 (Corsair), 2Gb NVidia GT 540M + Integrated Intel, 1920x1080 15" display.
Originally it had a 1Tb HDD, 5400rpm, which has been upgraded to a 480Gb  Intel 540Series SSD.

It has a custom BIOS which allows me to tweak several aspects of the notebook - just to make it faster! I also stripped it and replaced all the original thermal paste (aka "white gunk") on it with Arctic Silver 5.

From a fully off state to a completely loaded Win7 it takes no more than 14 seconds. It runs Win 7 x64 Ultimate, my own installation, and I don't plan on changing that. It has absolutely none of the original bloatware that came with it.

I also use Kali Linux on it, but booted from a flash drive with persistent storage.

I've had it for a few years, and its battery is already shot: it doesn't last more than 20 minutes anymore.

[wraper]

If you need a small, lightweight and portable computer, then a laptop is definitely the way to go, but a desktop PC is far better in almost every other way.

Exactly, totally agree.
I have Acer V5-573G. 2kg weight, 2.5 cm thick, Full HD 15.4" IPS display. i5-4210U, GTX-850M GPU with 4GB of VRAM, 240 GB SSD and 1GB HDD hybrid HDD with SSD cache. Battery lasts about 6-7 hours if browsing internet. Pretty beefy for it's size and weight. Actually quiet decent for the gaming too.
But basically I use it only when on trips, most of the other time it just collects the dust. You know, lurking on the tiny display sucks, I'll better use my main PC with two 30" monitors, mechanical keyboard, good soundcard and beefy speakers.
Also I don't see a point in buying boat anchor gaming laptop which could compete with a desktop PC in performance when all desktop peripherals connected to it. Big and heavy so suck to carry it around, hot, loud and unjustifiably expensive.

[wraper]

I'm pissed, as I've been trying for a week and failing to boot UEFI linux with my poor excuse of a motherboard from asus. So what do you have and what should I get? Don't care about price, but I must warn, I am extremely picky when it comes to computers.

First of all, how old is your motherboard, model? Does it support uefi boot at all? Did you set the right settings in the bios?

[Chalcogenide]

Toshiba U840 with i5 3317U, 8GB RAM and an Intel 520 240GB SSD. The laptop was sold as non working, yet the only problem is that the previous owner dropped it and the LVDS cable disconnected from the panel. Total cost, including an upgrade of the wireless card to an Intel AC 7260, was around 230€ 18 months ago.
Apart from the mushy keyboard, the toshiba has served me very well. The touchpad does not suck...

Funny note: The SSD came from the previous laptop, a "fantastic" second-hand Olivetti Olibook T14 (which I found out was actually a rebadged Tsinghua Tongfang U45F - ever heard of them before?) - a low build quality Macbook clone, which is now being used by my sister. I literally had to drill holes to help with ventilation and to replace the piss-ant 2.1mm power jack (with non-standard barrel length, nontheless) with a more robust standard 5.5mm one.
The engineers did such a good job that WiFi antennas were right on the aluminum shell, killing the range, and they also forgot to bring the USB lines to the WiFi card, so bluetooth doesn't work. But this one was also dirt cheap: 300€ for an i5 3317U, 4GB RAM and including the aforementioned SSD, which cost well above 150€ at the time (2.5 years ago).

[AlxDroidDev]

On a side note, I consider my notebook (specs on previous comment) to still be pretty high-end, but my desktop machine is a lot better. Like wraper wrote, nothing beats a huge monitor (27" Dell U1713H, in my case), nice keyboard and a gaming mouse (even for non-gaming stuff, gaming mouses still rule).

I built my own desktop PC, because I can get a much higher spec than whatever Dell or any other manufacturer has to offer. As a part-time photographer, I need huge amounts of memory and a large, calibrated display. A notebook simply can't suffice for most photo editing work I do on my desktop machine.

[NilByMouth]

A laptop is okay for convenience, but if you want to do anything serious a desktop is a must. At least with a desktop, you can upgrade piecemeal and not splash the cash in one go and it's much cheaper (usually) if something fails. It's also good for gaming, but then I'm not intelligent enough to know any better.

[zapta]

MacBook air 11" here. This is where I do electronic design (Eagle), 3D design (Open Scad), 3D slicing (simplify 3D), firmware (LPCExpresso, Arduino), logic analyzer (Saleae), laser cut design (inkspace), mobile app development (Android Studio), general software development (java, python, shell), serial terminal emulation (CoolTerm), general internet and docs, and connecting remotely to the office.

Goes with everywhere. I also have a car charger for it I tether it to my phone for internet access. Life is good.

[Mark]

Anyone using a surface pro 4? 

[Armxnian]

...but a desktop PC is far better in almost every other way.

he certainly doesnt need features of a PC workhorse

What features? A laptop and desktop are the same thing, just different form factor. The only thing I can see a laptop suffer with is games, because they need to be run in real time. A decent laptop can run any engineering software or general programs. As I said, if you're encoding, rendering or compiling 24/7 get a xeon workstation, no point in putting so much heat stress on a laptop. You can easily get an ultrabook with an 8 threaded i7 and a mid range gpu. It costs more than an equivalent desktop, but it also doesn't weigh 50lbs and isn't glued to your desk.

First of all, how old is your motherboard, model? Does it support uefi boot at all? Did you set the right settings in the bios?

New x99 system, every component obviously supports UEFI, as windows boots without CSM. I have tried every combination in the bios and every combination of creating bootable media. I boot off the USB stick and get to the menu to select the distro and it just freezes. I can boot with CSM enabled and secure boot disabled, but I shouldn't need to or want to, because it makes dual booting a pain. And even then I run into trouble. I'm not the only one with this problem. Others with a different motherboard run into the same issues. Asus has no idea how to design a working board. I've had 5 asus boards over the years, all with different and stupid problems.

Anyone using a surface pro 4? 

The stand seems awkward. I'd be more concentrated on preventing it from falling off my lap than my work. Plus to use the keyboard, you need a fairly flat surface.

The only desktop I would even consider would be a xeon workstation. The QC of non server/enterprise parts is awful. As long as it boots windows and runs league of legends then it's stable. Almost every part is designed and named for gaming. But maybe that's for the reasons I stated above. Running something and getting 10fps isn't usable. But waiting an extra minute for a processing job to complete is fine.

[TheSteve]

Lenovo Helix - I rarely use it as a tablet though, I prefer a trackpoint and keyboard. Picked it up off of craigslist for a good deal.

[KL27x]

I am the other way. I haven't used a laptop for anything serious in years. It's not for lack of speed/power. It's more about peripherals and cost. For what I do, screen real estate is often more important than pure speed, and I do not have to travel for work.

If I plug my laptop into an external monitor, I can't use the laptop as a keyboard/mouse, because the screen is in the way. And a laptop takes more space than a wireless keyboard... and it's not wireless.

If I plug an external keyboard and monitor into the laptop, plus a USB hub and Ethernet cable and power cord, that's fine and all, but I will have to put this mess somewhere I can easily reach it --- i.e. it takes up bench space.

When you hook up a computer and LEAVE it that way, you can hide it away. Small form factor computers can even be bolted to the back of a monitor by the VESA mounting holes.

If the laptop is your entire system, then that's fine. If it's a chain in a bigger link using proprietary docking ports and other jazz, have fun relying on something that will be obsolete and unreplaceable in 2 years.

[Thorondor]

I prefer Lenovos with the TrackPoint; I absolutely hate touchpads.

I'm currently using a T440s; it's just about perfect for my portable needs (after I swapped out the stupid buttonless pad for one with physical buttons). For 'real' work, I still prefer a desktop.

[GreyWoolfe]

I also use a laptop for work-a Dell Latitude E6420 with an I7-2760QM, 8 GB and 256 GB SSD drive.  When I am working at home, it is docked with dual monitors, 2 printers and nicer speakers than the internals.  When I have to fix equipment on site, it goes with me and I take care of business.  It has been working fine for the past 5 years and probably will until IT decides to upgrade us-supposedly convertible laptops in a year or 2.  I hope whatever they choose comes with a dock.  The first laptop they assigned to us 12 years ago came with a dock and I have certainly been spoiled by it.  I wish there was a proper dock for my personal Inspiron 3520.  I would also use it for my dual monitor personal setup instead of the HP Z210 with dual video card.  I know it isn't much of a computer but it was free-I asked for a desktop to set up as a test computer and this was sent uninventoried.  I kept it for me and asked for another and received it. The heaviest work it does is rig control for my 2 HF Transceivers with an add on serial card.

[SL4P]

Nice to see that I'm not alone !

As above... Lenovo X220T since early 2012
8GB, 250 SSD, WLAN + ultradock with 2x 26-inch and all the ports I need. (except physical PCI etc)
- and in a pinch it's a convertible touchscreen tablet when I'm travelling.
Home includes a NAS for sharing and extra storage.  Trackpad AND little red wiggle-stick