Replace Laptop: NUC + Portable Monitor

[Windmill65]

Using a NUC with peripherals to replace a laptop sounds inconvenient to me. Each time you arrive at the customer's place you have to unpack and connect all peripherals, do your work, and then disconnect and pack up before you go. You'll see that the employees will forget one or the other item (e.g. mouse) and are inconvenienced when they arrive at their next customer. The benefit of a laptop or tablet is that it is all-in-one, without separate peripherals. I consider a NUC only beneficial for two use cases: either to replace a desktop computer, or as a headless server, where no human interface is required.

[ycchai]

Again, we don't work like that. We don't go to a site to show some PPT and leave. We literally camp at that place for days or months without packing up until we leave
@shri yes I am looking at USB-C powered portable monitors. Some guy demo his portable monitor powered by a power bank, hence its just a powerful USB port, i'm guessing at least 2A or 3A. They are cheap 1k+
@mwong222 tablet is nice setup but I can't expect them to use that on 10mb spreadsheet that needs gigs of ram when in office. I do intend to trial run with one unit and see, but need to see what pitfalls I may have missed

[East_coast]

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https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/continuum

Pity this concept was launched 5 years too early

[ycchai]

Actually I think ubuntu did try something like this. BUt I think the phone is not really powerful enough to run ask desktop. Might work with additional cooling fins etc

[jgl]

Again, we don't work like that. We don't go to a site to show some PPT and leave. We literally camp at that place for days or months without packing up until we leave
@shri yes I am looking at USB-C powered portable monitors. Some guy demo his portable monitor powered by a power bank, hence its just a powerful USB port, i'm guessing at least 2A or 3A. They are cheap 1k+
@mwong222 tablet is nice setup but I can't expect them to use that on 10mb spreadsheet that needs gigs of ram when in office. I do intend to trial run with one unit and see, but need to see what pitfalls I may have missed

I think that the NUC + peripherals idea is totally workable for this kind of scenario. Especially if it results in a bigger screen than your typical laptop screen. Sounds like this stuff is not transported frequently, it's just left on site. As long as your users are semi-competent and don't do dumb stuff like try to force USB plugs into HDMI ports.

What's your objective here? Is it so that you replace parts as necessary as they fail without ditching the entire package (e.g. you've had screens or keyboards, or touchpads crap out at various times on the laptops)?

Also worth mentioning, though I am sure you have considered it, Lenovo (and presumably Dell) provide default 3 year onsite warranties for the business line laptops. The few times I've had to deal with Thinkpad support, they have been extremely impressive. I have absolutely no idea what support for a non-business laptop line from, say, Asus or whatever, would be like but I can't imagine it would be very convenient.

Edit: Out of curiosity, what brand(s) have you been using so far, and what's reliability been like?

[jgl]

What’s the fan noise like when running under stress?

Have not bothered measuring it, it's quiet enough not to be an issue for my use case (desk mounted, within 1M).

[Windmill65]

We literally camp at that place for days or months without packing up until we leave

In that case could a NUC certainly work as a laptop replacement. You may want to consider whether your applications have certain demands on the graphical output. NUCs don't have the space for a powerful graphics card. But on the more modern ones is the built-in graphics processor in the CPU sufficiently powerful.
I have an (older) Intel NUC here at home and am running it as a headless server. It runs 24/5 and I didn't have any issues with it since I bought it, a couple of years ago.

[jgl]

If ycchai has been running random laptops, there's no way the graphics on a NUC is going to be a bottleneck, as both scenarios run the graphics processors built into the CPUs.

[ArrynField]

https://community.intel.com/t5/Intel-NUCs/bd-p/nucs

[ycchai]

I'm trying to achieve few main goals
1. I remove the need to keeping a bunch of laptops locked in the cabinet and taking them out only when they go on site and also buying a new batch as they die- So I cut cost from 5-6k per laptop to 1k per portable monitor
2. I can replace the 5 year old desktop they are using with new ones (i'm looking at CPU benchmark and the numbers looks promising)
3. they don't have to copy files here and there and can use the "desktop laptop" like their own desktop
4. I think i lost 2 laptop like someone said they forgot to pack up etc. this would force them to pack up otherwise they would have no PC to use when they get back to office

If I implement this, then I just need to keep 1 or 2 laptop only for presentation etc purposes