It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

> I honestly do not understand why so many devs seem to insist on doing work on a laptop.

I hate having more than one machine to keep track of and maintain. Keeping files in sync, configuration in sync, everything updated, even just things like the same browser windows with the same browser tabs, organized on my desktop in the same way. It's annoying enough to have to keep track of all that for one machine. I do have several machines at home (self-built NAS, media center box, home automation box), and I don't love dealing with them, but fortunately I mainly just have to ensure they remain updated, not keep anything in sync with other things.

(I'm also one of those people who gets yelled at by the IT security team when they find out I've been using my personal laptop for work... and then ignores them and continues to do it, because my personal laptop is way nicer than the laptop they've given me, I'm way more productive on it, and I guarantee I know more about securing a Linux laptop and responsibly handling company data than the Windows/Mac folks in the company's IT department. Yes, I know all the reasons, both real and compliance-y, why this is still problematic, but I simply do not care, and won't work for a company that won't quietly look the other way on this.)

I also rarely do my work at a desk; I'm usually on a couch or a comfy chair, or out working in a public place. If all I had was a desktop, I'd never do any work. If I had a desktop in addition to my laptop, I'd never use the desktop. (This is why I sold my personal home desktop computer back in the late '00s: I hadn't even powered it on in over a year.)

> ...why so many devs seem to insist...

I actually wonder if this was originally driven by devs. At my first real job (2001-2004) I was issued a desktop machine (and a Sun Ray terminal!), and only did work at the office. I wouldn't even check work email from home. At my second job (2004-2009), I was given a Windows laptop, and was expected to be available to answer the odd email in my off hours, but not really do much in the way of real work. I also had to travel here and there, so having the laptop was useful. I often left the laptop in the office overnight, though. When I was doing programming at that company, I was using a desktop machine running Linux, so I was definitely not coding at home for work.

At the following job, in 2009, I was given a MacBook Pro that I installed Linux on. I didn't have a choice in this, that's just what I was given. But now I was taking my work laptop home with me every day, and doing work on my off hours, even on weekends. Sneaky, right? I thought it was very cool that they gave me a really nice laptop to do work on, and in return, I "accidentally" started working when I wasn't even in the office!

So by giving my a laptop instead of a desktop, they turned me from a 9-5 worker, into something a lot more than that. Pretty good deal for the company! It wasn't all bad, though. By the end of the '10s I was working from home most days, enjoying a flexible work schedule where I could put in my hours whenever it was most convenient for me. As long as I was available for meetings, spent at least some time in the office, and produced solid work in a timely manner, no one cared specifically when I did it. For me, the pandemic just formalized what I'd already been doing work-wise. (Obviously it screwed up everything outside of work, but that's another story.)

> My best guess is this is mostly the apple crowd...

Linux user here, with a non-Apple laptop.

Really depends on your use case. I personally still run my 17 year old 2.4GHz Core 2 duo with 4GB of RAM as my daily runner. I simply do not hit the walls even on that thing. Most folks here simply would not accept that and not because they are spoilt but their works loads demand more.

If your ping is that high, you might be doing it wrong. Even Starlink is usually less than half that, usually a lot less. Most Remote Desktop setups I’ve seen are fairly and surprisingly responsive. It’s not quite as nice as a desktop 3 feet away, sure, but that only matters for a few things, and it’s good enough for most work. The tradeoff can be worth it since you can now work from anywhere via laptop and connect to the same machine. No need for multiple setups, most of the machine management is taken care of, upgrades are seamless. For various reasons I haven’t been able to move permanently to a cloud workstation, but TBH I often want to.

My experience is that, when it started (for me, 2004 was my first work-issued laptop), it was more about what the GP was saying. The first time I had a laptop for work, I was expected to be in the office from 9 to 5 (or longer), and was expected to be available to respond to occasional emails in my off hours, sometimes taking calls, facilitated by having that laptop that I could bring home. I was fairly junior; others more senior than I was would be taking calls (for which they'd need their laptop) from home and doing substantial work nearly nightly. (We did a lot of work with hardware and software firms in east & southeast Asia, so we'd have calls at US-weird hours.)

But even in the few years before the pandemic, I was where you're talking about, working from home a lot more often, and replacing office-work hours with home-work hours, not just adding extra hours at home to my office-work hours.

I think this still depends a lot on the company, though. I know people who are expected to be in the office for 8+ hours a day, 5 days a week, but still bring their laptop home with them and do work in their off hours, because that's just what's expected of them. But fortunately I also know a lot of people with flexible hours, flexible home/office work, and aren't forced to work much more than 40 hrs/wk.

Having a backup system can be kind of priceless sometimes. Also, if you have a desktop and a laptop you probably use one of them 80-90% of the time, so you rarely loose time syncing stuff.