My team has been running laptops as production machines for the last 5 years.   But they have a green light on buying any productivity hardware they need... wireless keyboards and mouses, 24" second monitors, etc.

Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse combo is $49 to $79 bucks.   And I even take them with me when I travel.   The ONLY time I use the @#$ touchpad is when I am on an airplane, and even then, most times I can work with a Targus retractable cord mouse that I got for free.

Last year, I needed a test machine.   I went to Best Buy, intending to buy a lowend desktop... $400.   Couldn't find one... but there was a $900 box with 8gb of memory, a terrabyte of disk, quad processor.   No brainer.   I bought it and use it as a test machine, with about 13 different virtual machine configurations.   But.....  as I now alternate 1/2 of my time between home office an official office, that darn box is always in the wrong place.  Were it a notebook, it would not be.

My notebook is a 17" monitor, dual core processor, 4gb ram, two SATA disk drives, with 600gb of space.  It's almost two years old.   I have no idea what can be had now.   I'm a professional developer, and I don't need much more.