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Comment by WayneBro | Hacker News Reader

Any opinions on why developers on HN/elsewhere seem to prefer laptops over desktop machines?

Do you really need to be coding on the bus/train/plane or in hotels? When you go to a meeting, do you really need to bring your entire development setup with you?

When I go into a client's office for a meeting I usually only need to take notes and do presentations. So I get a cheap $500 laptop for that. If I need anything at all from my home workstation, I just remote into it. Actually, I did this even before I was working for myself - I'd just remote back into my workstation at my desk.

Is it just that you don't want to deal with 2 machines? Are you just doing it because that's what everybody else is doing?

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As a college student developer, my needs are a bit different:

- I need to write code. This means having a machine that has all the software you expect available in some way.

- I need to collaborate with my classmates on projects. This means working on campus around a table to figure stuff out.

- I have to go to classes, labs, and workshops. Oftentimes classes will say "make sure you bring your laptop" because they're going to give you work time in class, or expect you to finish something in class.

- I like working with my laptop on my lap. I have a really comfy chair at home. There are a lot of great lounge areas on campus. It's nice to be able to pick up and plop down anywhere you feel like.

I got two machines at the moment. But I'm working in 4 places right now and only one is my home. Yes, 60-70% of the time I'm working from home, so it's okay. But the 30-40% I'm missing my desktop. Because my laptop screen is so tiny (13") I don't got a numpad or just 8GB memory.

I think I'll get a 15,4" laptop with i7, 16GB RAM and nVidia next and then simply get rid of everything on my local setup besides the boxes and the 2 displays (27" 16:10, they don't build them like this anymore, at least not below 700€, haha).

I think its because the performance of laptops is no longer dreadful, but its still a terrible money / performance choice. You can buy a dual CPU Xenon workstation (Thinkstation 910p) for less than the a 15" Mac released yesterday.

That's along the lines of what I do. I get a used Thinkpad for occasional travel and use it to remote into my beastly dual Xeon workstation that is stupid fast and less than half the cost of a 2015 MacBook Pro.

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