I've found myself in a bit of a tough spot of late. With my computer having caught fire recently, I've been making do with a combination of an iPad, my phone, and my Steam Deck. Having used this arrangement for a few months, I have a few thoughts on how well things have gone and a few side notes along the way.
The first thing of note is obviously that SteamOS is not Windows. Many apps will run fine through Proton or Wine; in fact, I'd say most do at this point. That's still not 100% and you may want to use Linux-native apps where possible to avoid compatibility issues that can arise.
Of course, there's also the option of installing Windows onto the deck. There are a few notable things there too. One is that Valve still hasn't released an installer that officially allows for dual-booting off the internal SSD; this means that you only have two options for installing Windows on the device. Either you let it be a full-time Windows instance on the SSD, or you use an unsupported (Microsoft dropped official support for it and has added some barriers to make patching more painful) method called "Windows to Go" off of a SD card or USB drive.
I've tried the latter, with a USB 3 hard drive connected to the dock. Performance is shaky when I/O gets involved, especially when installing Windows updates. I really don't recommend it. One thing that I can say for sure is that even with relatively safe levels of debloating, Windows is nowhere near as lightweight as SteamOS. You absolutely can feel the difference in even just navigating the desktop environment.
Speaking of the desktop environment, I'm using the official Steam Deck dock and have it hooked up to my usual monitor, keyboard, mouse, gamepad, USB hub with microphone and other peripherals, and so forth. It all works very well. Some of that is luck on my part-- the official dock has had some compatibility problems in the past, particularly in the video area-- and the fact I have hardware that talks to it cleanly and reliably is purely luck. If you were going to try using a Deck as a mobile computer, I'd suggest looking into third party docks and checking reviews very carefully before making a purchase. The official dock has been a bit of a fiasco from day one.
While the machine itself only has 16GB of RAM, which I'd consider the absolute minimum you'd want on a Windows desktop at this point, performance is actually just fine. Multi-tab browsing isn't a problem; I've been able to play Final Fantasy XI (yes, the 20-year-old MMO) on the Deck with a browser window open with multiple tabs tracking in-game tasks without any problems. On Windows, I'd be pushing users to be using 32GB in general, since Windows is nowhere near as lean.
This brings up a thought I had maybe around 15-16 years ago. We've long passed the point where the average user needs a new computer to do average tasks in general. When Windows Vista came out, we had some issues with underspecced machines being incapable of keeping up with the demands of the OS, much less heavy applications on top of it, but by Windows 7 several things had happened to change the situation.
One is that Intel's onboard video stopped being completely useless. Having decent pixel shader support allowed the OS to offload UI rendering to hardware that's better suited to the task. While a lot of users berated the idea that you should need a GPU to handle desktop applications, calling it a waste of power and unnecessary, time has shown that it's definitely better to offload all you can to the GPU.
Another is that the CPU itself has passed the point where average casual PC use is problematic. It used to be that new versions of Microsoft Office would hit your CPU hard, that web browsing would show the limits of what your CPU could handle, and so forth. At this point, the only things that really push you to need a PC upgrade are the increasingly bloated OS releases from Microsoft and games that push your GPU, RAM, and to a lesser extent the CPU to their limits.
With that in mind, would I recommend a Deck as a casual carry-around computer for people? That really depends. A laptop is almost as portable, doesn't use an onscreen keyboard when you're not hooked up to a dock, and has a larger screen built-in. On the other hand, if you're using your device mostly to play games and then as a desktop PC when you're at home hooked up to a dock? Yes, the Deck absolutely can replace a desktop PC for a lot of the normal tasks you'd be doing with said computer.
Perhaps that's why they're pushing AI so hard. The average user can find that nearly any computer sold in the last 10 years to be suitable for most normal tasks, and the industry has survived purely on the idea that computing power would double every few years forcing people to buy upgraded hardware and software. We're in a matured market now, and perhaps the discounts we were getting to hardware due to competition and constant upgrades are coming to a permanent end. I don't think we've had any truly revolutionary upgrade in PC hardware in the last ~14 years since Sandy Bridge came out; Intel has been stuck with 10-15% upgrades at best for each generation.
I don't think AI is that killer app, despite half of the industry clutching at it in desperation, either. It increases power consumption greatly and the results are not great to put it mildly. The price for performance ratio is absolutely terrible, and it's actually getting worse with each new generation of LLM. I won't be surprised in the slightest if the collapse of the bubble causes the computer industry to nearly collapse outright and kills off a lot of well-established companies.
My last thoughts on this for right now:
If I had my full desktop machine up and running, would I be doing this still? Definitely not. This is workable, but having a high-spec desktop machine is going to be a superior experience for someone as steeped in tech as I have been my entire life. Do I miss having that desktop machine? Not nearly as much as you'd expect. This is quite usable and very comfortable. There are a few games I can't play this way, but a fairly large percentage of what I do works great without any tweaking or debugging. Programming is not one of those things; that's an area where having high CPU spec, a large amount of fast storage, and a ton of RAM is important. I could probably make it workable if I wanted to put in the effort, but medical reasons have increasingly pushed me away from that hobby. Thus, that's no longer a factor I should be concerned with.
Lastly, would I buy an upgrade for the Steam Deck should one appear? Absolutely. There are two things that make the Steam Deck a killer product. One is that Valve absolutely nailed the performance VS battery life and heat generation balance. If you look at all of the Windows handheld competitors, they have higher performance, but the battery life is significantly worse. The other major factor is that while SteamOS can't run everything, it runs a large percentage of what's out there very well and with lower overhead in the RAM/CPU due to the Valve-tweaked Linux install being more lightweight. They absolutely nailed that balance as well.
If I were going to upgrade, I'd want to find something with similar or better battery life on top of the increased performance. Preferably with similar or less heat generation than the existing Deck models, as well. I don't see Lenovo, Asus, etc. coming up with anything like that any time soon. Valve themselves have said that a successor to the Deck's APU will only happen when they can find something that is a true upgrade, and I suspect their criteria for what would be a true upgrade is the same as mine. As such, I'd be looking at Valve's work specifically when upgrade time comes.
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