[erinaceousjones]

I did two dissertations on realtime outdoors computer vision stuff (detecting landing targets for quadcopters and shadow classification), with a really high-end (at the time) laptop with 16GB memory, 8 cores @ like 3.5GHz turbo, a 512GB SSD and a GTX970 GPU which was okay at running tensorflow et al. Not only was it a very capable workstation which I could leave crunching data on overnight, both dissertations involved field robotics (quite literally, doing stuff in fields with drones :)), and being able to use the same machine wherever was a godsend.

No matter where I was, be it at home, in a computer lab, presenting my work to peers or my supervisor, or outdoors in a field, I had the same tools, same large dataset of raw h.264 video streams, same hardware, same everything, without needing to rely on streaming data to and from some server on the internet, or worry about keeping my work and software in sync across multiple machines. I could tweak my algorithm parameters in-field and I could continuously compile my huge 100-page latex sources for my dissertations from.. the beach :)

[matthewmacleod]

I think that's definitely one of the good use-cases of a portable machine. Before buying a new one, I did do the maths on using a more powerful desktop instead and just keeping my older laptop for travel – but like you say, it means constantly thinking about what data and capabilities you have available at any time. And coincidentally I was also working last week on real-time computer vision for robots, on a remote customer site, so it was nice to have my machine with me :)

[emj]

I myself will take a small computer and a fast connection anyday, I do not think money is the biggest issue here just what is practical.