I have a laptop not because I want to use my computer on my lap or while unplugged, but because I want to be able to carry my computer between different workplaces.
As an industrial controls engineer, I'm constantly bouncing from my desk to my rolling cart in the shop, to putting it in my toolbag and driving to a local customer's site, to putting it in my carryon and flying to a remote customer's site, to my home office. At each location, I have power available. At some locations, I have external monitors and a keyboard/mouse, so I could easily plug in a Mac Mini or luggable mATX desktop, at others the laptop is often perched on some convenient stack of pallets and peripherals like monitor stands would be highly inconvenient. A 10x15x1.5" slab with a power brick (and a spare power brick can be left at frequently used locations) is just a really nice form factor to carry around, it's superior to separate parts like even a small Mac Mini, SFF, or mATX desktop, an external monitor that probably needs a box of some sort to keep it from being damaged, and a keyboard and mouse.
I use too much Windows-only proprietary software to make the iMac sensible, but I like the idea of the power and legibility of a large display, desktop-grade CPUs, and the larger thermal envelope available by ditching the battery and requiring wall power. Does anyone make an all-in-one or a carrying case for all-in-ones (with probably a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse) that would make jumping between different work locations make sense?
I'm aware that's sort of what a gaming laptop is, and it's pretty similar to the Lenovo Thinkpad, Dell Precision, and HP Elitebooks that I've used in the past...Especially after a couple years of 24/7 charger connections while baking the battery with a Quadro GPU running Solidworks, you barely have enough battery capacity to carry the laptop from one desk to another. Unfortunately, all those workstation laptops make concessions to try to pretend they're a Macbook Air where you can do...something? apparently some people do some kind of work with the laptop running on a battery and balanced on their knees. It's just a foreign concept to me. I'd rather they were 2" thick with a 120V socket, no battery, and 400W of CPU+GPU.
As an industrial controls engineer, I'm constantly bouncing from my desk to my rolling cart in the shop, to putting it in my toolbag and driving to a local customer's site, to putting it in my carryon and flying to a remote customer's site, to my home office. At each location, I have power available. At some locations, I have external monitors and a keyboard/mouse, so I could easily plug in a Mac Mini or luggable mATX desktop, at others the laptop is often perched on some convenient stack of pallets and peripherals like monitor stands would be highly inconvenient. A 10x15x1.5" slab with a power brick (and a spare power brick can be left at frequently used locations) is just a really nice form factor to carry around, it's superior to separate parts like even a small Mac Mini, SFF, or mATX desktop, an external monitor that probably needs a box of some sort to keep it from being damaged, and a keyboard and mouse.
I use too much Windows-only proprietary software to make the iMac sensible, but I like the idea of the power and legibility of a large display, desktop-grade CPUs, and the larger thermal envelope available by ditching the battery and requiring wall power. Does anyone make an all-in-one or a carrying case for all-in-ones (with probably a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse) that would make jumping between different work locations make sense?
I'm aware that's sort of what a gaming laptop is, and it's pretty similar to the Lenovo Thinkpad, Dell Precision, and HP Elitebooks that I've used in the past...Especially after a couple years of 24/7 charger connections while baking the battery with a Quadro GPU running Solidworks, you barely have enough battery capacity to carry the laptop from one desk to another. Unfortunately, all those workstation laptops make concessions to try to pretend they're a Macbook Air where you can do...something? apparently some people do some kind of work with the laptop running on a battery and balanced on their knees. It's just a foreign concept to me. I'd rather they were 2" thick with a 120V socket, no battery, and 400W of CPU+GPU.