Sorry, didn't realize you guys were using a 13.3" PC for real work. Yikes!
I guess spoiled here to have separate PCs for work (two 21" displays), home (24" display plus TV as second display), and a laptop for portable use. Using a small display laptop as my main box would be to limiting for me.
When I am running a VM or logged on to another PC remotely, I like to view it on a second display instead of switching back and forth...
You do not understand, do you?
We do work on these machines. Using VMs, mostly headless.
I have 10 to 20 VMs running on my X220 while on the road - in my case mostly build environments - and _none_ of them is taking a sinlge pixel on my display.
I'm genuinely interested in why are you running 10 to 20 VMs at once. I come from a MS environment and I don't see any use cases in my daily work where this would make sense.
A group of 8 of them is a set of build/test environments for a piece of open source software I am the author and maintainer of. They host different combinations of Linux distributions and kernels (the software is the userspace layer for a set of kernel modules), so that whenever I commit enough changes, I can just mass-run tests, code build and package builds accross those VMs. This is just run by a central Makefile on my local machine, and is more convenient than remotely using the build environment I have on my servers when on the go, sometimes using 3G WWAN, because of better latency saving me many seconds for each test build or when having totally unreliable uplink (train and plane mostly).
Then, I generally have about 5 to 10 VMs which hold customer environments, from simple standalone servers or clusters that I am currently prototyping, to full-blown network topologies with Linux/BSD server VMs connected to GNS3-powered emulated Cisco devices. I typically have copies of those on my servers too, but again, on the go, it is more convenient to have them running locally, again to speed up development cycle.
Of course, anything that requires long-running tests goes on my servers, not on the laptop. When at home (home office actually), I typically only use the VMs on my servers, fiber internet connection making working remotely with the datacenter seemless.
The paradox is that I have more things running on my laptop than on my desktop workstation, typically ~10-12GB of RAM for the VMs on my laptop, when my workstation 32GB are barely used at all (but used to be before I could afford to buy servers and host them somewhere nice) :-)
I understand perfectly... You guys have use cases much less common then mine. Sorry that I have use of more then one computer and my laptop is strictly a portable device that is stored in my backpack (I don't really want to connect and disconnect it all day long).
I think the downvotes may be due to perceived boasting about your many systems, and/or to mockery of others for not working the way you do.
You should not boast about having two desktops and a laptop. Lots of people prefer a single machine setup and use very large servers or large external displays when needed. This usage pattern has got nothing to do with money constraints.
I use a Dell XPS 13 (2014 edition) as my main dev machine with an i7, 512GB SSD and 8GB RAM.
It supports DisplayPort 1.2, which means I can Daisychain monitors. I plug in one DisplayPort cable and it connects to my 27" 1440p monitor and my 24" 1080p portrait monitor, giving me 3 separate displays to use.
My XPS13 stays closed 90%+ of the time. It's connected to 2x27" monitors, external keyboard, etc. I use a laptop because when I do need to travel I don't have to sync a laptop up to have everything I need, it's already there.
I guess spoiled here to have separate PCs for work (two 21" displays), home (24" display plus TV as second display), and a laptop for portable use. Using a small display laptop as my main box would be to limiting for me.
When I am running a VM or logged on to another PC remotely, I like to view it on a second display instead of switching back and forth...