I have a problem – My laptop is too powerful

When it was time to buy my oldest son a laptop for school last year, I took to opportunity to upgrade my machine as well. I normally have both a laptop and a desktop. My desktop is normally my workhorse which I use to do my hardcore virtualization labs and any video encoding projects. My laptops while normally portable are generally pretty powerful as well. I normally get a 14″ laptop but was swayed by the Dell XPS 15. It’s a pretty nice machine. It has an i7 processor and I upgraded it to 16GB of RAM. I’m able to do some pretty cool virtualization labs with the machine. However, it’s a brick. It’s a 5+ pound laptop and is BIG. It’s not a travel friendly machine.

I’ve taken my old Dell XPS 420 desktop as far as it will go. The laptop is generally more powerful than the desktop but it’s not the jump in performance I expect from when I go from one desktop to the upgraded desktop. Therein lays my problem. I’m stuck in-between. My laptop while powerful is no true desktop replacement but it’s too big to serve the purpose of my traditional laptop. I would sell it but that’s too much work.

I also have the challenge of being spoiled by its performance. I should be looking at an ultrabook like the XPS 13 or MacBook Air. Instead, I keep gravitating to machines like the MacBook Pro with Retina because I know what a well-equipped laptop can do. At some point I’ll have to bite the bullet and replace this setup with a proper laptop/desktop configuration. Until then I’ll continue life in limbo.