As a console gamer, PC is starting to seem pretty appealling

[Pemalite]

SvennoJ said:

I was never under the assumption that it would play the latest games well, just underwhelmed that recommended specs that seem close don't mean anything. Some games run great, some have a lot of problems, not all scales well

That's your problem. You think your Laptop is somehow representative of a Desktop.
Majority of "Specs" released by game developers do not include notebook specifications... Your geforce 740M for instance was released in the middle of 2014.
It is now the middle of 2016. A low-end card even on release isn't excpected to run the latest games at a decent settings to begin with.

Compared to the Desktop it is probably closer to a Geforce 730. (If it has DDR3 memory, which I assume it would.)
And compared to the 900 and 1000 series, there is no equivalent, nVidia doesn't make GPU's that slow anymore on the Desktop. ;)

Majority of even Core i7 notebooks are still only dual-core processors in an era where games are releasing with a minimum of 4 threads. That 2.5Ghz clockspeed could also just be the best-case-scenario turbo-clock.

The fact of the matter is... If you bought a PC that was designed for gaming to begin with... You would be happily gaming for Years without an upgrade.

SvennoJ said:

My original point was about convenience, you never have to check or wonder if something will be playable on console.

If you had decent hardware to begin with, you don't need to look at specifications to see if something will run, so it's not a negative in my eyes.

SvennoJ said:

It's only the convenience factor I do not agree with. You can't go to the store to buy 'the thing' and expect all the games made for 'the thing' to run well for 6 to 10 years to come.

I find PC gaming far more convenient than console these days.

Console networks don't seem to be as responsive as Steam's, so downloads take longer, they also go offline more often as Steam's network has far more redundancy. (I am looking at you Sony.)

Or they get Hacked/DDOS over a Christmas period. (Looking at you Xbox Live.)

Patches also seem to be larger and more frequent on console.
If my Xbox is connected to the internet and a patch is available, then I am unable to play that game unless I disconnect the internet and go offline.
If a patch is available on a PC game, I can ignore it and download it later or pre-load it.

It's also easier to navigate my PC library on Steam than it is to navigate my Xbox Library on my Xbox One, I have hundreds of games for both platforms, you would expect there would be some kind of sorting and categorization of titles wouldn't you on console? But nope.

There have also been tons of cases where a new released game on console has simply been unplayable for days/weeks/months, on PC usually you can find a work around... On console? Nope. You have to deal with it. (I am looking at you Battlefield 4, Halo: MCC, Skyrim etc'.)

I could keep on going, but you get the point.

On my PC I can just buy, download and start playing faster than I can on Xbox.

Fact of the matter is, Consoles are becoming more PC-like in how they operate... And it certainly hasn't been for the better in every aspect, install and load times are longer than they have ever been.