His advice is fantastic but I have to mention 1 thing... HP is TERRIBLE. I'm a repair technician and we get so many of these damn things, it's like 10% to 20% of our business, and we repair iPhones, androids, iPads, Mac's, PC desktops, laptops, gaming PCs and even vintage computers.

This is because of how HP laptops are designed. All of the components and hinge assembly are attached to this thin flimsy plastic palm rest, it has the rigidity of a wet newspaper. During use, opening and closing, the plastic flexes constantly and over time the plastic gives, snaps and the laptop can no longer stay open.

Not only do they break frequently but the repair is expensive. Since everything is attached to the palm rest a technician needs to gut, then reinstall every component onto a new palm rest. Around 1-2 hours. Troubleshooting and testing afterwards also takes longer, as every component has been "fooled around with" there's a high likelihood for mistakes.

It stings when I have to tell customers that the repair for their $500 laptop is like 250 or 300$.

Oh: if you're doing fancy-schmancy 3d industrial CAD stuff for designing car engines or the like, you'd want to make sure you have a nice GPU, which is typically in the 'gaming laptop' category if you're going laptop.

However if you're just doing ordinary diagrams and stuff, then onboard video will be absolutely fine.

All of that is solid advice. As someone who builds their own PCs for gaming, runs Apple laptops for when I leave the house, and was a former Linux user in a past life, I will add that if you choose that the laptop format is the right choice for you, don’t write off Apple immediately, budget permitting. Yes, they are expensive. They compete at the high end laptop space, not at the low end. If you have a strict budget then yes, better value can be found from other brands. However, in the high end space, they are very competitive for what you actually get. Pros are great battery life, high build quality, and one of if not the best trackpads on any laptop out there. I don’t know the specifics of your situation, but Apples accessibility features are also excellent. Yes, they gouge you on RAM and SSD upgrades, which is inexcusable. However, last time I checked, Microsoft with their Surface line and Dell charge the same upsells, in one case for Dell, even more egregious. So we can hate on the industry as a whole for that.

All that being said, for the absolute best value for your money, it’s 100% a desktop PC.