Char Jackson wrote:
On Wed, 16 Sep 2020 08:06:13 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:
[...]

[About laptops versus desktops.]

[FWIW, my private PCs from the 80's to early 00's were desktops/towers.]

I travel for work, or at least I did before the current situation arrived,
so I use my laptop for work. It makes sense to me to use it when I'm
working from home, as well, to maintain a sense of continuity. So my laptop
is my work machine,

I started with laptops at/for work. For moving between work-at-home,
work-at-office (both with full docking stations, big monitors,
keyboards, 'mice', etc.) and some work-in-the-field.

Laptops were most convenient, because all your stuff/files went with
the laptop from location to location. Keeping stuff in the cloud was
not yet possible/available, so desktops at home/office and a laptop for
on the road was not feasible, aside from the added expense.

So when I retired, continuing to use a laptop was a no-brainer. (Not
to mention that I could keep the company laptop and all other
work-at-home equipment! :-))

[...]

My wife only uses a laptop at home. She likes to be able to move from the
bedroom to the living room to the breakfast nook to her sewing room, etc.

Being able to move our laptops in and around the house is indeed a big
plus for us. We do not need a big display, so desktops bring us no
advantage and make moving around impossible.

Laptops are more expensive than desktops, harder and more expensive to
repair or upgrade, prone to being dropped and broken, and prone to being
stolen.

If the two most common upgrades are memory and drives, then laptops are
probably easier to upgrade. Usually there's a single screw or other
fastener that allows a door to swing open, allowing direct access to memory
or drives. For other things, like video cards and other expansion cards,
desktops are easier.

Laptops being more expensive than desktops, is a YMMV thing. They
might, they might not, depending on needs. Sometimes and possible even
often, a laptop might actually be cheaper, especially because of the
higher demand for (consumer) laptops than (consumer) desktops.

Theoretically speaking, I indeed had a situation where a memory or/and
disk upgrade or/and display replacement would have been nice and with
the laptop not all of those were (economically) feasible.

Also, within the house I don't think there's an
appreciable risk of theft. In the event of a house fire, in theory we could
grab the laptops on the way out. I hope not to test that theory.

Not that it covers the potential loss of ones recent activities, but I
have offsite and in cloud backup for these scenarios (which also covers
the laptop getting lost/stolen/whatever outside the house).

[...]

I used to use a laptop when traveling, and still have one around here
somewhere. These days, I prefer to use my smart phone when traveling.
It's lighter, smaller, and much easier to carry. I primarily it for
Google maps, e-mail, an occasional web search (usually just for weather
forecasts and making restaurant reservations), and Kindle.

When I travel for pleasure rather than work, I do as you do. A smart phone
is good enough for me. We also pack a tablet or Chromebook in case we need
a bigger screen.

For - extended, often several months (but of course not now :-() -
travel for pleasure, we take all, laptop, tablet and smartphone. We need
the laptop, because during those long periods we might/need access to
our files and cloud-access is too costly or not available at all (i.e.
no mobile coverage, so no Internet).

So all-in-all, OMMV (Our..., generic 'our')) and most likely OMWV! :-)