My Lenovo Y700 does what i need it to, surprisingly easy to repair to boot!
I do everything from gaming to rendering (blender, kdenlive, etc.)
For less intensive work, such as general programming, browsing, etc. it works absolutely wonderfully and the power management makes it easily to 3 and a half hours+ even after being a few years old (and in constant use, also the battery is easy to relace so yeah).
The only injury this top has acquired to date was… well, it’s prone to suicidal tendancies and attempted to fling itself of a box (definitely self-motivated), it landed on the side, snapping a mount, and slicing my display cable (that was easy to fix and only cost $33)
All around a great system, still stands up today as a pretty high mid end desktop “replacement” (a little heavy, but it’s sturdy)
I’ve a Dell Inspiron 3470 (something like that, it’s a 3000 series with a 5th gen Core i5)
I bought it because my primary desktop died. School had “strongly recommended” a laptop, so I got the Dell instead of rebuilding the desktop. This was 3 or 4 years ago, maybe?
I’ve done everything on it. Computer Science school work with Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Arch Linux, Fedora, Ubuntu, and everything in between. It was my primary work workstation when I was a sysadmin.
For development, my job was BYOL (“L” for Laptop, but some of us devs called it Bring Your Own Linux lol). It currently has Fedora 26.
As of now, I use it primarily as a mobile workstation. Anytime I’m out in the living room with my wife or the cats I use it. In the office, I have four desktops to take care of what I need to. I appreciate workspaces and the shortcuts to bounce between them, but for what I do I generally need at least two active screens up. Flipping between documentation and code or flipping between various terminals isn’t viable with my workflow.
So, to answer your question, I use my laptop for personal projects, where I can use books or my brain to reference things.
My “Laptop” is the Surface Pro 2, or at least my main one (I have an old Dell laptop with an i3 3110M that is a Linux machine basically)
I use it for drawing/note taking, gaming (yes, gaming, older games were very much playable, Batman Arkham Asylum looked incredible on it, but you won’t catch me playing Witcher 3 on that) and some programming (but needed a keyboard).
This tablet served me well and it was my first computer with an SSD so I was blown away by how fast SSDs are compared to Hard Drives.
I may end up replacing BOTH the Dell laptop with Linux and the Surface Pro 2 and go back to regular laptops as my main computer and not Tablet PCs. I have a Wacom Input device externally already for the drawing and note taking needs.
Reason why is:
Tablet PCs like the Surface Pro is expensive af. It was $1300 when I got mine and to get a tablet like this with 512 GB or more storage I would pay over $2000. It’s much cheaper to get a laptop.
I need more storage, which ties in with the price of the tablets. There is no upgrade path for this tablet. Getting a bigger microSD card is all I can do.
Over time, I been needing a bit more GPU performance than I use to, especially getting into PC gaming. Intel HD 4400 was nice when I first had it but now it’s not even adequate and I can’t take my desktop with me anywhere so I got to have at least SOME GPU performance. GT 1030 or RX 550 levels would suffice for a laptop, still far higher than what I got.
My tablet lacks I/O, 1 USB port is infinitely better than none but 2 would be a lot more convenient.
Battery is not replaceable. That tablet will be a brick when the battery stops working, it’s already degraded, what use to be somewhat impressive battery life is not good at all now.