this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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For your original question: I would not bother with a CPU with less than 6 physical cores. 4 laptop cores might work, but you can't upgrade them.
Laptops have some advantages and if you already have one it is a valid alternative, but I would not bother buying a new laptop.
Advantages are built in battery as UPS, keyboard and display, but upgrading is very limited. If it has an additional dedicated GPU you might even forward that to a VM.
32GB ram should work, but with 64GB you will have more possibilities. Some laptops are limited in functionality, but new ones should have the necessary virtualization options. With 6+ physical cores modern laptops have some great virtualization potential, but with modern big/little core Intel CPUs virtualization might need some additional tweaking.
Cooling wise it might be worth looking for a model that doesn't push air out in front of the opened display. If you store it closed the limited cooling can cost performance.
Thunderbolt is a good but expensive way to add new hardware like 10G networking or fast external storage.
Personally I extended my lab with an old Dell Precision 7540 workstation laptop, which is really great but not cheap.