I've been thinking about this for a while. With the repairability of the steam deck and the power available to it, it seems like a no brainer to use it for a bit of school work or casual browsing, Discord etc. Like you would a normal desktop.
There's a new product type popping up called LapDock that's basically a hollowed out laptop but often with a giant battery, UPerfect has one and as well as the NexDock and they seem promising.
My personal biggest gripe is screen resolution and colour accuracy, as well as battery life. As I also do photography colour accuracy would be a great plus for me and as for resolution, I've been using 2k and higher screens for years and going back to 1080p seems like a bit of a turn off. However, UPerfect has monitor only types but having to set that up ontop of a mouse and keyboard while out and about seems less than ideal in comparison to a laptop.
Any thoughts on this? Anyone who's tried it? Anyone who've tried desktop mode on high Res screens and seen any downsides, stutters, playback trouble, etc?
Edit:
I went out and bought myself a USB-C Hub with a PD port, HDMI and 2 USB to get a feel for the desktop experience on my TV at home. Since I do most of my work related things in Windows I installed it on a separate partition using GParted to shrink the home folder and then went through the Windows installer. After installing Valves drivers from their help page without errors everything seemed to work absolutely amazingly!
Everything from 4K playback to Windows animations all goes smoothly. It's a trouble free Windows installation which from my previous experiences is a nice change of pace. The only hiccups I can notice is the occasional stutter and some Windows feeling laggy when resizing and moving, mainly the settings window and other WinUI software with lots of detailing and graphics to them.
I tried installing Deathloop through Xbox Game Pass and that worked wonderfully too. It installed quickly and I tried setting the resolution to 4K and got a solid 15 FPS! I tried 1440p as well and got around 30 and then went to 1080p where I got around 45. Not quite enough for me as I get slight headaches when below 60 but good enough I feel like. In the end for gaming it doesn't really matter since I have handheld for that. Alternatively up-scaling.
As I've tried the Windows experience on the Steam Deck now I'm gonna continue my experimenting with SteamOS and see how that goes. My biggest issue so far has been that the USB-C Hub in Windows works perfectly at 4K 60Hz but SteamOS doesn't seem to be detecting the 60Hz mode at all when the screen is at 4K. I'm gonna troubleshoot and see what I can find. If anyone has had any similar issues and know how to resolve them any pointers would be greatly appreciated!
All in all the desktop experience on the Steam Deck is amazingly smooth. Truly feels like a proper Desktop when things are setup the way I need them to be and I couldn't be happier. The question for a laptop replacement is still in the air for me however. Now that I know that the desktop experience will be as smooth as it is I'm wondering which right way to go about it would be. As a lot of people in the comments on this thread and others mention that the build quality of the NexDock is absolutely terrible, a portable monitor seems to be the better way. I suppose in the end it would boil down to either living with bad build quality to get the more seamless experience. or chucking along a bluetooth mouse and keyboard with a portable monitor which could potentially not be too big of a hassle depending on how lazy I'm feeling during the days.
More thoughts would be welcome! Especially if there's any other users who have any experience with external displays and how they're using them!
As a photographer I'm a bit torn on this one.
I believe AI art should definitely be labeled to minimize people being mislead about the source of the art. But at the same time the OP on the Adobe forums post did say they used it as any other tool for touching up and fixing inconsistencies.
If I were to for example arrange a photoshoot with a model and they happened to have a zit that day on their forehead of course I'm gonna edit that out. Or if I happened to have an assistant with me that got in the shot but I don't want to crop in making the background and feel of the photo tighter I would gladly remove that too. Sure Adobe already has the patch, clone and even magic eraser tool (Which also uses AI, that might or might not mark photos) to do these fix-ups but if I can use AI, that I hope is trained on data they're actually allowed to train on, I think I would prefer that because if I'm gonna spend 10 to 30 minutes fixing blemishes, zits and what not I'd much prefer to use the AI tools to get my job done quicker.
If the tools were however used to rigorously change, modify and edit the scene and subject then for sure, it might be best to add that.
Wouldn't it be better to not discourage the use of editing tools when those tools are used in a way that just makes one's job quicker? If I were to use Lightrooms subject quick selection, should it be slapped on then? Or if I were to use an editing preset created with AI that automatically adjusts the basic settings of an image and further my editing from that, should the label be created then? Or if I have a flat white background with some tapestry pattern and don't want to spend hours getting the alignment of the pattern just right as I try to fix a minor aspect ratio issue or want to get just a bit more breathing room on the subject and I use the mentioned AI tool in the OP.
Things OP mentioned in his post and the scenarios I mentioned are all things you can do without AI anyways it just takes a lot longer sometimes, there's no cheating in using the right tool for the right job IMO. I don't think it's too far off from someone who makes sculptures in clay uses an ice scream scoop with ridges to create texture or a Dremel to touch up and fix corners. Or a painter using different tools and brushes and scrapers to finish their painting.
Perhaps a better idea would be if we want to make the labels "fair" there should also be a label that the photo has been manipulated by a program in general or maybe add a percentage indicator to see how much of it has been edited specifically with AI. Slapping an "AI" label on someone because they decided to get equal results by using another tool to do normal touch-ups to a photo could potentially be damaging to ones career and credibility when it doesn't say how much of it was AI or in what reach, because now there's the chance someone might be looking for their next wedding photographer and be discouraged because of the bad rep regarding AI.