I was in the mood to get a "mobile workstation", and ended up buying an HP Omen gaming laptop, which had an i7, 16GB of RAM, and discrete GPU. The idea was to be able to run one or more VMs and do hardcore development. And maybe play a few strategy games.
In the intervening years, I have hardly used the laptop for the purposes I had initially intended, though I do occasionally play strategy games on it.
I've mostly been using an inexpensive Chromebook as a remote Linux terminal, and then logging into remote machines to do development. With a little GNU screen startup script, it is easy to resume where I left off, regardless of my location.
I like the idea of using a web terminal to work on a remote, much more capable host. I found however Chromebooks (only tried the old Samsung ARM abased one and the original Pixel) lacking for this purpose. The Samsung ARM was clearly made for a price-point and while a good value at the the time, not worth further discussion today. But even on the (then) flagship Chromebook, the keyboard is just so-so (and lacks page up/down keys!), doesn't offer Ethernet and the screen is terribly reflective and a wee bit small (nice aspect ratio though). Not sure how current Chromebooks fare, but colour me skeptical.
For the "full desktop experience" I sit in front of a 42in 4K TV, which isn't too portable.
At other times, I am content with something small and handy (1.25kg). The keyboard on my Acer Chromebook R11 is decent for its size. I really like the standardized keyboard functions for brightness, volume, etc., and use them a lot more than on a regular laptop. After installing Linux, and having ssh-agent loaded with keys, I'm ready to remote into my systems. Long battery life, due to its puny Intel Celeron processor.
I have a couple different machines I use on a regular basis.
The main thing is that I don't care if an existing GNU screen session named 'database' exists or not. If I was doing database work, that's the session name I will use. So I want to connect to that if it exists. Or if the machine has been rebooted, create a new session.
I really like having the terminal windows also reflect what I'm working on in a particular session.
In the intervening years, I have hardly used the laptop for the purposes I had initially intended, though I do occasionally play strategy games on it.
I've mostly been using an inexpensive Chromebook as a remote Linux terminal, and then logging into remote machines to do development. With a little GNU screen startup script, it is easy to resume where I left off, regardless of my location.