Upgrading a desktop is much less expensive than buying a new laptop. If you were to go out and upgrade a desktops RAM and video card, it`d run around $200. Buying a new up-to-date laptop could go well into the thousands. That`s not to say you can keep the same desktop forever, they do get too old for new hardware eventually. They just last a lot longer than laptops. I would never trade my laptop for a desktop though. I`d rather have something less functional that I can move with me rather than some beast of a machine that I can barely pick up and much less move.