I suspect laptops also don't get as many hardware upgrades. While many people probably never open their desktop enclosure, some do, and I suspect a far smaller

I suspect laptops also don't get as many hardware upgrades. While many people probably never open their desktop enclosure, some do, and I suspect a far smaller percentage open up their laptops. (Edited to remove mention of overclocking, after I noticed that the researchers left overclocked systems out of the comparison). Another possibility is that hardware is designed to handle some level of outlying abuse (maybe it's engineered to handle 95% of the things people do to it), and laptops' outliers are more severe relative to their average level of abuse than desktops.