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I think some people are misunderstanding laptop + desktop vs laptop only. Yes laptops are very capable of replacing a desktop but there are bottlenecks which can hinder usefulness. If you are imaging with a laptop you are usually capturing video. Here a SSD drive will give you better sustained recording performance than a HDD. SSD drives are also smaller capacity so you have a limit to how much you can capture in an imaging session and you really should be moving video streams off to another location to keep space as free as possible. Laptop CPUs use multiple cores to trade off against raw speed (3GHz CPUs have been with us for 15yrs) so your software may not make use of the cores (tasks like capturing video are often only handled by one core so if you need to capture high frame rates its the GHz speed that limits you, if you need to control a lot of devices simultaneously then more cores are your friend). Screen quality means little for capture but USB3 is more important. Gaming graphics chip is useless for capture.
If you want a laptop for capture than get a laptop for capture and do not do anything else with it. Anything else you install will take up space plus slow down the operating system, both of which will lower the capture frame rate and effect battery running time. Internet security software will slow it too.
Best solution is a capture laptop without bells and whistles that lets you capture a lot of data as fast as possible (high GHz CPU with at least two cores and a large capacity SSD drive). Process the data on another machine clogged with whatever software you want but if you compromise what you can capture you are limiting the possibilities of your imaging. Buying a laptop just because you want to buy a new toy is wasting your money and there are plenty of people who will happily take it.
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