This is a waste of time.
You concede boot-up speeds will be faster, because it's accessing the hard drive. That's 1% of time that it will be faster. Great, now stare at your PC and do nothing, because that's the only way they'll be equally fast. Do
NOT open Firefox, or Internet Explorer, or even Chrome; those will access the hard drive, and the laptop will be slower to do this than the desktop. Do
NOT open Outlook to check your email. Do
NOT open Microsoft Word, or any other word processor, as it needs to be pulled off the hard drive. Do
NOT attempt to open any program, as it will need to be pulled off the hard drive, during which time you will traditionally see the "hourglass cursor" and know your machine is waiting on the single biggest bottleneck that has plagued all computers since...well, you're old enough to know the answer to that, you were there.
So sure, if you don't care how long it takes to open a program, or that it will take about 30% longer any time you'd like to access your hard drive, that is, in a matter of degree and materiality, your call. But 30% is not
pretty negligible to the point of almost nonexistent, but maybe someone who wrote code on line printers doesn't mind the wait.
The bottom line of all of this is the author of this topic asked for opinions, not for an argument. I stated mine, I placed down facts and backed it up with sources. Anyone who has ever double clicked on an icon and listened to their PC grind away as it revs up the hard drive and blinks that little light at them knows how annoying it is to wait for a program to load. Can you fix it? Yes, but in the end, the desktop is going to be faster unless you spend more to beef up the laptop. If the difference was as marginal as you state, no one would sell desktops anymore, and we'd all have super computers in our phones...
You can have it
Cheaper, Faster or Mobile
Pick two.
End of story.