One thing I hate about laptops is touchpads. Another thing I hate about laptops is the point stick and its buttons. Fortunately, these can both be disabled, but Dell's solution for this has some usability issues. What can't be disabled though is the third thing I hate about laptops: The keyboard. Sure, it is made small to give the laptop nifty and portable outer dimensions. Yet, there is like an inch border used for nothing on each side of the keyboard, and if you have to carry along an external keyboard how portable is that?

My laptop actually has a full size keyboard. Numpad iirc...

Considering you hate everything about laptops that makes them laptops, why not go for a tablet ? Or one of these micro PCs with a portable monitor and a battery ? Although all of that pretty much falls apart of you need a beefy GPU. Why the hate though ?

@CptFox What is a tablet and how would that solve my needs for a full-size keyboard? Micro-PC is definitely NOT the solution. Then I'd have to carry along a monitor and a keyboard anyway. I don't need a beefy GPU though. I mostly write code and that wors alright with commodity hardware. Why the hate? Because crappy input devices just won't do the job, they cause errors and lower my efficiency, which in turn leads to frustration and hate. Yet, I do love laptops as a whole, because they can easily be brought along anywhere. With the bright screen of my Latitude, I can surf and code outdoors even in broad daylight :) It's got its limitations when it comes to keyboard and only one, quite small, screen, but yet a limited computer that I can use anywhere I want is better than being confined to my home office.

@CptFox As you can see, you're absolutely wrong. I don't hate everything that makes laptops laptops. I looked tablets up and they don't even have a keyboard, just a touchscereen - precisely the kind of input device that I HATE. Everything called something with "touch" is just utter crap.

@TerriToniAX So basically, if it isn't a desk mouse or a desk keyboard, you hate it ? I was suggesting the tablets as it's just the screen, the battery and the CPU, a bit less to carry. You can still pack your keyboard and mouse

@CptFox If it isn't a standard full-size keyboard, I hate it. As @owithg mentioned above, a laptop keyboard can also be full-size. But otherwise, yeah you got it. Uh-huh, now I see your point with the tablet. But it still has got that despicable touch screen. Can it be disabled?

Well, I'm not sure, but you can just refrain from touching it, that's what I usually do (I use my surface when I need windows at work, I just use synergy to treat it as a supplementary screen for my usual computer)

@CptFox "Refrain from touching". Sounds like some of my dates back in the days when I was single... ;) No seriously, how can you refrain from touching the screen if you need to just move it or angle it, or you're holding it in your lap while sitting in a bus seat. That's exactly my problem with touchscreens right there. Press it deliberately and nothing happens, touch it accidentally and everything gets messed up. Touchscreens suck!

@TerriToniAX Seems like it's been a while since last you've used a touchscreen on a consumer device (I agree the ones on automated cashiers suck an infinite amount). They've become quite reactive nowadays, my only problem with them is that my fingers aren't that precise. If you still hate them, I'm pretty sure you could write a script to disable the touch screen whenever an input device is connected.

@CptFox Nope, I've tried new consumer devices and I still hate them. Most of the time nothing happens and if something does happen, it is not the thing I expect. Maybe my fingers too are too unprecise and/or too big, or too conductive or too little conductive, I wouldn't know. The bigger the screen and the bigger the icons, the most likely I am to hit the right icon - usually, not always. At the local Police office there is a fairly large touchscreen with only two options, "Permits and passports" and "Immigration", quite large icons and set far apart. But even then, when I wanted to get a passport for my youngest son, I got a queue tag for immigration, wasting some 20 minutes only to find out that the stupid machine had misinterpreted my input. FUCK TOUCHSCREENS!