Ah I see what you mean by tiling. Still, such a setup feels… excessive, no? I can completely understand that you literally never need to pull up anything since it’s all just there, but I dunno (I’m reaching here) doesn’t your machine get hot from all the displays and forcing all screens to do constant screen updates?

It is excessive yes, but I'm all about going above and beyond, sort of say. It doesn't really get hot since it doesn't update if there's nothing to update - I've checked in the driver. Actually an error in said driver might have put an end to my windows journey on this machine, as some bug was causing all screens to not refresh unless there was any app doing a draw somewhere. It does use quite a bit of VRAM, though(~1.5 gigs) but that doesn't matter when I'm working as I turn off the dGPU and the iGPU uses RAM which I have plenty. I used to just grab this machine and go to the nearest restaurant with poor internet(less distractions) and focus on work until the battery dies, and I've consistently got 2-2.5 hours off.

When you have to travel, you can’t take all that with you – so working on a laptop at the airport must be incredibly frustrating if you’re used to things just being there, no?

I do travel with it. It is a bit frustrating, yes, but as mentioned, the quad-screen setup is portable and I can pull it even in an airport given enough space. The problem is TSA, they used to not give a damn about laptops, but the last time I moved, they forced everyone to take out laptops and turn them on, at every one of the 4 airports I went through. But I had like 5 on me: My personal one w/extra screens, a corporate issued one as a spare, a tiny laptop that I used to carry in my pocket which saved me quite a few times, and also a colleague asked me to grab his laptop and iPad to pass off to his relatives. All this, along with a few HDD's, was just enough to fit into a carry-on bag. But checkpoints were all something like:

• Is that your stuff?
• [On reflex already] Yes, and that thing in there is a vape, not a hand-gr...
• Do you have any laptops in there?
• Five
• Five what?
• Five laptops
• Come here, put them out on this table and turn all of them on
• 😩😩😩 It's going to take like 10 minutes to pack and unpack, and I've got a flight to catch
• Don't know, don't care

5 minutes later

• Alright, everything's good. Why'd you need so many for, anyway?
• I'm an IT specialist
• Okay. But what's this though?
• It's 4 hard drives
• Take them out, show me
• 😩 Sure...
• Okay, everything seems in order. Why'd you need so many for, though?
• I'm an IT specialist
• Ah, right... You're free to go

I could've saved myself trouble and put all them into a checked baggage, but since I was moving through some totalitarian dictatorship states, I'd rather have all the data close to me rather than have it pulled out and searched without my consent, which they are likely to do given that they forced people to hand off unlocked phones for search before.