For years I almost exclusively used laptops, as I liked the convenience of being able to take them everywhere. All was great, never felt like I was loosing anything by not having a desktop.

However, last time I went and looked at computers I realized...for what I was paying for a pretty good laptop, I could build an awesome desktop setup.

I set my budget at $3,000 and priced out $3,000 laptops, as well as $3,000 desktop builds. To get roughly the same thing I could get in a $3,000 Desktop, I would have to buy an over $4,000 laptop. The price advantage, plus the fact that the desktop is much easier to upgrade and fix over time (thereby lasting me longer), made me realize it's worth it to own a good desktop.

So, now my main computer is a custom desktop that well exceeds the performance of what you'll find in most big box electronics stores (core I7, Radeon 4870x2, Blu-Ray burner, 24" monitor, ect); plus it has multiple hard drives setup in RAID so my information is safe even if a drive failure occurs.

With that in mind, I still haven't tossed out all my laptops. Instead, I wiped them clean, put only the software on it that I would need for basic tasks and working. Then, I just take one as I need it and load on only the files I need for what ever I'm doing at the moment. If it gets broken, stolen, a virus, ect....I don't have to worry about it. This works out just fine for me, as I can do my work on the laptops when I need portability, and just transfer it to the desktop when I'm done.

In short, having a solid desktop built with high end hardware and a few cheap laptops has become my preferred choice.