I've noticed that even professional reviewers have been conceding that virtually any new PC will do all that most people do and without much noticeable difference. What we are doing right now, for instance.
I’ve been itching to build a new desktop as I had been doing since it first became possible in 1986 and Windows 1.0, which I still have somewhere, but haven’t done it in several years, and I’m no gamer, but love to research and find the best components on the market for the best price, and put them together with all the frustrations that go along with it.
I would definitely agree with that. You won’t notice any issues with your portable if you choose correctly. However, I will say, that both of our computers are maxed out with the most RAM they can hold, along with replacement hard drives hand-picked for throughput and access time, according to benchmarks from various testing sites.
Any computer is only as fast as its slowest component. Often, the component most noticed is the hard drive, loading or saving things. Portable hard drives are small and slower than desktop drives. We both had the original drives, but the best upgrade was reimaging the drives to our new drives, with up to 40% more speed, several years after we bought the original systems. Another tweak we did was to put in higher-end processors when those became available. However, doing either of these requires some knowledge of the systems and their capability. Of course, you may find the default system to be perfectly fine.
I can definitely say that we really enjoy catching HiDef online content on the 1920x1200 laptop screen, lying down in our bed. :-) You can’t do that with a desktop monitor!