Try that on the Tex/Mex border. It won't fly there either.

We have 5 desktops, 1 laptop and 1 tablet. The laptop is elaborated and only for traveling. The desktops have more disks than any laptop will support.

Desktop for me.
I have a pretty good laptop and it comes in very handy for when I'm traveling but I doubt it would be very acceptable for my everyday use.

So, I prefer to buy a used HP DL380 G8 with dual CPUs, 128 GB of RAM, 8 SAS HD, and dual 750-1100 watt power supplies, then install a good video card, and a sound card. The price is a reasonable 1500 to 2000 USD. The system will last for five years, and do anything you ask of it, including running huge network emulations of 150+ routers and switches, plus VMs of Linux. You can have 30 browser windows open while running these huge emulations, and still run spreadsheets of whatever, and even take a break by watching NetFlix. Combine all that with a pair of 30" screens, and you are ready to conquer any task.

I could never do all that with a laptop, which always has a very slow HD, as compared to the 15K rpm HD SAS drives in the DL380; not to mention the limited amount of RAM that can be installed in a laptop.

I never power down the system. Mine has been running continuously for several years now (but then, HP DL380s are built to run, and run, and run). The power consumption, compared to everything else on the house is small; especially if your tune both the fans in the system, and the power saving on the OS.

So, for me, a super powerful desktop (aka converted server) is the way to go. I run Debian v8.x on the system, and can then explore other Linux versions as VMs using Oracle VirtualBox. The desktop/server sits in a rack (with rails) and the USB, video, keyboard, and mouse are fed to my office on the main floor of the house (about 70 feet of cable). There are many good remote transmitters that can use either cat 6 STP cables or fiber cables, out there.

There are several vendors out there that sell refurbished servers that will customize them to your specifications for CPU, RAM, HD, NICs, etc.

I prefer laptops since I can take them anywhere and because I'm not a gamer or someone who uses multimedia editors a lot so I don't really need a powerful desktop ^^