Good day!
I need help. I have enough savings to buy a decent laptop around the same price point as the 512GB Steam Deck. The problem is that laptops at this price point are horrible at gaming. So I am seriously considering getting the Deck instead. My usual workday includes writing code in PyCharm, accessing Github through browser, and MS Word and MS Excel. Does anyone here have a decent experience with using the Steam Deck with those applications? Thank you so much.
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I would hesitate to call it a full desktop pc. But since i have mine it replaced my laptop completely.
I made it about 6 months without a PC using my deck for emailing, researching and online recreation. I’m writing this right now from my SD.
I did fire up my old laptop to do my taxes on but mostly because it had my data from last year on the harddrive and I also never found a good solution for printing to my ancient laser printer. Otherwise it’s just fine.
For your workload I’d say it will be just fine, except for the Office suit. You might want to look for alternatives like OnlyOffice.
If you’re the kind of guy who never brings their laptop outside their home, then a Steam Deck with an external mouse, keyboard and display can probably replace a laptop.
If you want to use the Steam Deck as anything other than a gaming device outside of your home, you’re going to have a bad time.
I had my laptop off for repairs recently, which turned into a nightmare. I think maybe 2 months in total I was doomed witbout it, but had my Steam Deck to fill the void.
I haven’t any experience with your particular programs on it, but as a desktop it worked perfectly fine for me. Well, it IS a computer, after-all.
I have been using Linux as my main desktop OS since 2007. So if the question is, can you use it as a Desktop OS for coding, browsing, editing office documents etc? Then yeah, of course you can.
I use it as desktop PC. I learnt how to use Linux quite fast. Libre Office for office stuff, Gimp to edit photos, Firefox for internet. All You need is there.
you could try software like libreoffice first off, that will tell you how well you would fair using the steam deck as your daily. pycharm can be found in the discover software center
unless you’re willing to replace steam os with windows (you shouldnt to be honest, its the magic of the steam deck), its not a good a desktop.
reading through your other replies, either request a laptop/desktop from your work, they should be the ones providing you your work machine both from a security and business standpoint. If for whatever reason you cant get a computer from work, get a used laptop instead and a cheaper steam deck
Well, first of all, when comparing price - don’t forget that you will need a keyboard, mouse and external display to conveniently use it as desktop. And yes, it also means you need a dock, not necessarily official. When I compared prices it seemed to me that you can actually get a laptop with some low-end dedicated GPU for more or less the same money (now LED version of deck have a huge discount, so now steam deck may indeed be a better deal).
As for using it as a desktop PC, you will have to consider two possibilities: use it as is, with SteamOS, or install windows. Difference is that fro example native MS Word/Excel probably won’t run on SteamOS (at least not without tinkering), and you will have to use LibreOffice instead (IMHO, it’s very good, but some people have opposite opinion, so you have to try to to make your own decision). Browser and PyCharm will work natively.The Deck DOESN’T perform as a desktop PC, it performs as a Linux desktop PC & that is totally different to the Windows PC you’re talking about & experienced - forget Word & Excel - it’ll be a Linux “equivalent” be warned.