Normal PC or Laptop?

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I have a laptop and a dock so I can use monitors with it, which is how I use it probably 98% of the time. It's not worth me having both laptop and desktop for the few occasions when I want to use a laptop but when I want to it's really useful so I consider this the best of both worlds. Laptops are pretty powerful these days and I don't need massive graphics capability for anything I do.

I like building my own units, so normal PC all the way. My current build is from 2016 but I've upgraded a few of its parts along the way. Next upgrade would require a total overall (motherboard + CPU + ram).

I have always used tower computers. From my very first, which was a 40 MHz 386 I bought in April 1992. I put some files on floppy disks when we worked in groups in certain college classes (I don't think many students had laptops back then). I graduated in June 1997. (Funny story, when I first started using computers with Word Star 4.x back in 1988 at one of the various University of Cincinnati computer labs, we had to use a floppy to reboot some of the older PCs.)

My last job featured company laptops on carts with car batteries. They used very custom software to manage inventory at a warehouse. It was quite needless to bring your own laptop.

So I've never really been in a position to need a laptop. Not as a college student, and not in my working life. Now, I am working on an older Windows 7 computer. All I need is to surf the web, handle E-mail, sign up for electronic billing and keep track of my household expenses in my spreadsheet. I can do this with MS Excel 97 or Excel 2003. If my hardware dies, I can do all of these things under Linux, with "Crossover Office" that lets me run Office 97 and 2003 with no problem.

I still don't really need a laptop. And I can still get the "clicking" style keyboards, much more durable, I think, than the keyboard on a laptop computer. And my monitor is 10 years old, works perfectly, and is quite large and easy to view.

(I also like selecting my own parts -- Seasonic's absolutely fanless 460W PSU, Radeon 6770 video card, which is the second fastest card ever made that can function as a completely passive video card. I like the "look" of fins like a motorcycle the card has.)

Same, at this point, you can expect even a decent desktop to last 5-10 years for just regular uses. Obviously less time for gaming, but still longer than a laptop.

I do have a Chromebook for when I want to type when I'm AFK, but a large part of why I got it was that I was taking online classes at the time and wanted a backup in case my elderly desktop had hardware problems.

With VNC software, it's pretty easy to run things from a laptop on a desktop for when you need more power, but don't necessarily need a fast refresh rate on the graphics. Most of my files are stored on a synology NAS for easy access on whatever device I'm using.

Laptop.

Got a top-of-the-line Thinkpad in 2016 for about 4500 USD (?), and I don't plan to get rid of it for another 5-7 years. The specs were good enough back then for any kind of CAD/3D/movie/visualisation software etc., and it still holds up well. Having a 4K laptop screen at that time was quite enjoyble, too.

Advice: Always go for quality. You'll save more money in the long run.

I should probably add that laptops probably use the OS they came with (Windows) for the life of the laptop.

Desktop / tower computers may have enough power for the next version of Windows, but if not, they can be repurposed and used with Linux, and do just fine for office applications, web surfing and e-mail. More advanced things, like audio work and video work may require more tweaking.

I'm a PC-building snob but I swear by Dell's small form factor PCs. I'm using one now because the electricity where I am is sketch and I don't want to burn up my expensive custom build. But I love the Dell, and I've used older generations of this form factor before, and they are just quiet, small, easy to upgrade and there are parts available on ebay. The one I'm using is a 6th-gen i7 with 32G RAM and 3.75 TB on three SSDs, and it does the job. I'm not gaming on it, though. I'd need my main rig for that. This machine used to be my Plex server. I'm running a single 27in 1440p monitor and wish I could use a wall-mount for a second, which I do have in a box under my desk.

I used a Mac mini for almost ten years. It was much harder to work on, but I maxxed out the RAM in that thing, replaced the drive with an SSD, and replaced the cooling fan and it just kept running and running. Got long in the tooth and needed fresh thermal paste, and I didn't want to do that, so that's why I have the custom build PC. It was going to be a hackingtosh, but I didn't hate Windows.

I prefer desktop because if you're going to put a big monitor on a computer, it isn't portable, anyway. And you do need a big monitor.

Something else making portability more difficult: I must use a USB sound interface. One with a good headphone amplifier. There is no good built-in sound on PCs of any kind, no matter the claims.

Laptop, because I want my table freed up for the arts & crafts I like to do.

I'm just the oppossite. When I set up a computer it dominates the whole room to the point where the rest of the furniture has to be planned around it. At present I have the downstairs computer connected to 3 47 inch displays. That's about 13 feet of display.

A Normal PC - A PC operating under Google Chrome, Google Apps.