Well, if you hooked your keyboard and monitor to the laptop, then technically, it's physically the same...
But kind of defeats the purpose since you're still buying several desktop items.
As convenient as laptops are, any serious PC gamer or people that use
Adobe/Autodesk softwares for work simply can't rely on a laptop.
This. But you make it sound like there's next to none of these people left on the planet.
Depending on the industry of work, there's actually plenty of jobs that can't just dock a laptop
and expect it to be powerful enough.
And if you really think about it, a laptop almost takes up just as much space
if someone plans to dock it and hook it up with a keyboard and a monitor.
The only difference is the slightly more leg space under your table because there's no tower.
Perhaps for the regular user, the laptop might be more common,
but I don't see the desktop being dead any time soon, since there's still so many people that need it,
and simply the massive amount of computer enthusiasts,
who rather have options on parts to build and personalize their PC's.