Like everything in this world, I think it's situation dependent.
I traveled for work, and would live out of a hotel room for 4-5 weeks at a time. I have a gaming laptop that doesn't fit in the bin while going through TSA. Always got comments about it. But damn, if I didn't love setting it up in my hotel room and leaving it there during my tour and being able to play some games during my evenings.
Every time I've ever owned a non gpu laptop, it's like I've always had to bring along either another laptop or a gaming console when on longer term trips or temporary moves. I don't care that gaming laptops are 0.2 inches thicker which somehow makes them 100% impractical to most people. I'd rather only have to bring 1 device with me.
Yeah, I used to work a job where I was basically on call for 6 hours at a time, but didn’t need to do much unless something broke. I’d help set things up at the top of the day then tear things down at the end. But in between, I was basically just waiting for things to break. It’s safe to say that I used the fuck out of my gaming laptop and VPN at my desk. Because I obviously didn’t want to try playing games on a company computer.
I played a lot of single player and idle games at that job, because those are easy to walk away from at a moment’s notice. Just hit pause and you can give your full attention to whatever problem has popped up. Then once it’s resolved, you’re right back where you left off.
I too used mine as a backup. I don't have a working one atm, but technically my steamdeck works for most of the games I'd want to keep up with, if a bit harder to use. I can even do ffxiv, though definitely less skilled using the steamdeck. I might try with a dock and my 8bitdo controller and see how that feels (already have both, but haven't really tested it since I use that controller for switch instead).
We have the best new scanners (I think they are CT scanners) at our airport. You don't have to take out anything anymore since their new scanners can scan it anyways, somehow. Apparently you can also take any amount of fluid with you and you just keep it in your bag, which is neat.
The one point against this is when you need a workstation laptop, because workstation laptops are WAY more expensive - especially the "workstation GPUs*. I know professionals who get gaming laptops all the time because it's cheaper, believe it or not. Like one of the lower tier Lenovo gaming laptops, say a $800 laptop? If you wanted a "pure workstation" laptop, that'd run you about $2300-ish. Anything with "military grade motherboard" or something like that.
Macs are excluded because Pro line is already expansive AF.
Well sure, but now that spot could be in bed or a recliner. I do almost all my gaming with a steamdeck, now. Busy adult life requires this convenient bit of gaming hardware.
Youre not wrong but i had a job for awhile where i had about one day's worth of work (if i busted my butt) to do over 2 glorious, unsupervised days. Their IT was slackass too. They had their own machines on lock but i could bring my own in and look at reddit, porn, whatever.
I hated my job, really hated my boss, but i never got paid to fuck off quite as hard as i did there so I look back on those times warmly.
That's not being slackass. You bringing in a machine to watch porn on is your supervisor's problem, not IT's.
I was told multiple places that the only thing they wanted filtered was malware sites. They have a C-level who wants to watch porn but don't want to pay for someone to set up access groups? Don't want to pay or give time to have someone lock down the network? Not my monkey, not my circus.
Of course it's come a long way since I was doing it. Those things took time. Now you just set up your access list based on directory services groups and click a few buttons. But it's still not my problem.
If you are a gamer and have a need for a portable computer and can only afford a single machine, gaming laptops are great. I also had one for a while that I was using for lan parties and conventions. Worked great.
I having a gaming laptop. 13 inch Razer blase stealth.
I bought it for the GPU and its compact size.
Let's me do some hash cracking while at work, though if its some serious work I'll boot into Linux on my gaming rig and do it there, but I don't like to tie it down when I could be playing games.
As I get older and older I have less and leas free time.