[tdavis]

I think it depends on numerous factors. For instance, I have spent so much time at a Kinesis keyboard that a laptop keyboard slows me down. Not by orders of magnitude, but enough to be annoying.

I used to exclusively work at two 24" monitors. Then I switched to a tiling WM and from many years on OS X back to Fedora. I found that the WM/OS switch improved my productivity to the point that I was better off on a 15" laptop with those two changes than before them on two monitors. And the setup was around $2,000 cheaper.

Now my ideal setup is a single large monitor along with familiar peripherals (Kinesis, trackball), xmonad, and Linux. If you'd told me a year ago that I'd be happier with one monitor than two--or nearly as happy on a laptop as a desktop--I'd have said you were nuts. But, here we are.

I agree that the difference in productivity between the worst-case (Mac laptop) and best-case (Large monitor; peripherals; xmonad) is not orders of magnitude. But I would say that over time it has come to approach 2x, which is not at all insignificant.

And I think "expense" matters little compared to "comfort". If a keyboard that didn't cost $250 was just as comfortable for me, I'd buy it. In the case of this particular switch (laptop -> linode), the comfort level would be close for most tasks as I already live in Vim and things with Vim-like bindings. But the totally new window/peripheral interface would definitely slow me down. I've spent enough years comparing environments over long periods of time to know that.