Laptops + docking stations are usually just as fast as a desktop. You can buy $10,000 desktops that are much faster (50+ cores, and a lot of RAM), but most developers don't find them enough faster to be worth it. (in my benchmarks rebuilds with 40 cores finished faster than rebuilds using all 50, for a 10+million line C++ project) It is easier to have everything locally where you are. If like many of us you sometimes work from home remote into a different machine is always a bit painful.