My first PC was a 286 with 1 Meg RAM, a 20 meg HD and a monochrome screen. I sold it to buy Julies engagement ring.
desktop vs laptop is just what your used to. I've had laptops at work for > 9 years now so its second nature to me.
Re Retlaw, Programming is just logic, nothing more than breaking stuff down into less and less complex tasks. At root level its all either addition or subtraction(using AND, OR, NOT etc) . There is very little else a computer can do, it can just lots of them very quickly
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