@Souichirou Yes, gaming/consumer laptops provide better price/performance “value” but how do you think that is achieved? By cutting costs on quality and support.
If you need a strong dedicated GPU, it increases costs a lot. That is why I previously had a gamer laptop. While it was good in hardware, I can tell you from general and annectodal arguments that the quality and support are highly underrated factors that come back to bite you later.
My gaming laptop’s BIOS did not support the full capabilities of the hardware, only the “max” specs they listed at product launch, and it was tremendously frustrating that Asus refused to address this. Meanwhile my now 5 year old Latitude has had over two dozen BIOS updates, from major vulnerability issues to more minor improvements like battery management optimization for improved longevity.
Additionally, the high performance parts combined with the drive towards thin chassis means that temperatures are often high, causing performance reduction via throttling and longevity concerns. That is less of an issue in enterprise gear.
In general, I would say most people overestimate their performance needs and underestimate the value of quality. Until recently, CPU performance was pretty stagnant over about a decade and people were fine.
@xevious I got an ultraportable a year ago from this Canadian wholesale enterprise refurbisher https://www.bauersystems.com/ I don’t know if they ship internationally, but there are many other similar companies. I check their inventory from time to time, but I’ve noticed that the selection is sparse lately.
About GPU modularity (MXM GPUs), in principle it sounds great. But upgrading requires BIOS updates to support new hardware, which, you guessed it, does not happen. Also, replacement GPUs of the same model in case your GPU dies are so exorbitantly expensive that it does not make sense to spend so much to revive an old laptop. So unfortunately, in practice they offer little to no benefit.
@jeff51 Yes, backups are essential no matter what device is used. Maybe you’ve encountered this fun and famous parable on the importance and types of backups: http://www.taobackup.com/