I was recently at a presentation where one of the speakers demonstrated some Siemens PLM software - high detail 3D CAD models, stuff like that. One of the benefits they pointed out was that it ran well even on the demonstrator's laptop computer - you didn't need a big workstation to run it on.

However, the demonstrator's laptop was a huge 17" desktop replacement thing.

That's the market I see for these things - mobile workstations that let you run workstation software at client sites and trade show booths, without needing to muck around with carrying and powering a second monitor along with your laptop.

Furthermore, computer companies derive some benefit from holding the "performance crown" even if it's with a product hardly anyone would buy. For example, you can load your computer with two $500 graphics cards or an "extreme" $1600 CPU but probably few people do. I think the idea is to get news coverage for your product line and demonstrate how cutting edge your product line is.

Or, given that we're comparing price and performance, a scatter plot.

I decided to replot some of the graphs properly. Here are the results.