Laptops can be iffy. If you think about this, we push the GPUs pretty hard along with the drives and CPU when rendering and uploading. A lot of heat made and a lot of juice used. So a laptop that does what we need is either going to be really pricey, really short battery life, or really a bit warm in the lap.
A desktop tower can be easier to upgraded/repaired as needed. If I have to replace my beast laptop, I want a setup similar yours with a tower and SSD drives.
This is a good point. Though with modern tech I doubt it'd be an issue. Using Premiere Pro CS5.5 I've found certainly on the exporting side it hits my CPU rather than GPU. There may be a way to change it, I've not looked into it. I would want the GPU for a few games that I still play.
My editing isn't heavy so it would be fine I think. Would be nice to have something portable. Thats the main problem is price. You don't get portable, power, well priced together though.
You get a lot more for your money from the desktop side. I personally don't keep hold of videos once I've uploaded them. If anything I hoard the full size photos that I've taken. That 1TB portable drive (963GB usable) which I do everything on still has 707GB left. So 224GB of stuff.
With plans of the A2 license and a restricted 650 I hope to get out more so would love something to take with me to do stuff on and offload footage. I mean I could buy more SD cards instead of using a portable drive but then the price racks up again.
Maybe if I find the winning lottery ticket