Finally these days you can get a laptop that is close to being as powerful as a desktop. Not there yet and probably never will surpass the desktop. Lets first take an example. Lets say a 2.5 ghz desktop and laptop. The specs can be the same. Equal ram, hdd the works. The desktop will be the faster machine. Just about every component in the desk top will perform faster. Lets start with the video card. The vid cards in laptop of course are not as powerful and as with every laptop component if it is not plugged in it usually is stepped down to conserve power. Not any 256 mb laptop video cards around, some laptops use shared ram and we know that sucks. Next is the HDD. Yes they have 100gb laptop hdds but your average drive runs at 4200 rpms. That is almost pitiful. All of your laptop components are so scaled that when you add the deficencies of each component it adds up to a big drop in performance. This is why you rarely if ever see benchmarks comparing the two. The worst part of the whole deal is that they are barely upgradable and usually cost twice the desktop price.Am i saying that laptops are obsolete, no way. They really are amazing for there size and functionallity but you do give up performance for convienence.