All machines become outdated.
A desktop provides a greater upgrade path.
It's up to you to set your budget and then go shopping.
If you want to run 7 programs at the same time I suspect your looking for a high end I7 with some serious ram.
Factor in the cost of several monitors.
1. So currently I have an old Toshibia with 6 gigs of RAM, i5-2410M, and I added a 160 gig SDD and 320 gig HDD and have been getting by ok.
I want to upgrade for graduate school, I need a computer that can handle program requirements of 2.6 Ghz, while running ~7 other programs on several monitors. I would most likely use my old laptop as the "travel/school" one, I just primarily work at home.
I do music production & editing, molecular modeling and prediction, and play old games (half life), but I would really like to be able to casually play battle field one.
I thought a desktop would make the most sense as it would stay at home, But would be more ($1500) to include a keyboard and monitor. I would want something somewhat long lasting at that price point, with an i7-6700 & 980/ 1070 at least
but Dell inspiron's with GTX960 have been found for sub 700, I just dont know how fast that will be oudated within even 2 years.

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