I too went desktop route. Built what I want - including lots of ECC memory. I too have a laptop for backup and travel (and a Chromebook used as RDP client). Sy

I too went desktop route. Built what I want - including lots of ECC memory. I too have a laptop for backup and travel (and a Chromebook used as RDP client). Sync isn't an issue. All work is on VMs, and they get backed up every day to my Synology. My backup laptop is a 6 year old Thinkpad, which hasn't been out of it's bag in over a year.