DAW - Desktop vs All in One?

Hi Guys, thanks for reading this
 
I'm thinking of getting a new cpu mainly to act as a DAW, with a budget around £1000, and I was wondering what you guys think about the use of decent all in one's as a DAW nowadays vs desktops?
 
I'm thinking of taking the plunge for the new Dell Inspiron 23 all in one:
 
Which has, 12gb RAM, I7-4700mq processor (unfortunately they put in one of the mobile/laptop processors instead of a desktop but the 4700mq still holds it's own/does really well from what I can see in terms of benchmarks, and from this has about 20% or so less power than the modern day desktop processors of say I7-4770), and also a 5400RPM hard drive (I'm gonna get a 7200rpm 1tb external drive if I go for this option.) additionally from the manual online, it looks pretty easy to upgrade the RAM and processor.
 
 
The alternative is a traditional desktop (either HP envy, or Dell XPS or a custom build, either way it'd have 16gb of RAM with an I7-4770(k) processor, and an internal 7200rpm 1 tb drive)
 
 
My question really is, for a guy who uses probably about 10-15 tracks max in a band type setup, with maybe 3-4 vst's (the most draining being BFD3 for drums), is 4gb RAM and a processor power difference of about 20% between the all in one and a decent desktop really gonna have that much of an impact on performance? The reason I like the all in one option is a mixture of portability, space in my flat, and to be honest, it looks freaking cool. Assuming no effect on performance, I'd easily opt for the all in one, but if the all in one will be sluggish and impact on workflow I'm looking at the desktop option.
 
Any thoughts or opinions are welcome :)
 
Thanks
 
Nick

The "all in one" is in many cases a bad compromise. The one you reference incorporates some of the design decisions mandated for a laptop, without all of the size and portability advantages of a laptop. The relatively low powered CPU  and the slow hard drive are laptop standards where long battery life, heat dissipation and cost are the driving factors. The tiny case provides very limited accommodation to internal modification. Swapping memory and maybe the hard drive (depending on heat dissipation issues) are the only real modifications you can make. You can certainly get more performance from a tower or desktop for an equivalent price, and if a component fails you can probably replace it for an affordable price.
 
Do you really plan to lug this thing out to record an orchestra in a wilderness area? Most of that kind of field recording is better done on a solid state dedicated recorder, which weighs a few ounces and runs on standard batteries. If you can carry a dozen microphones a mixing console etc. to do real recording out of your home studio but still in a location with electicity, you can throw a mid tower machine and a couple of 24 inch monitors into the van as well. If it takes you more than ten minutes to hook up a desktop computer to a monitor keyboard and mouse at a new site, you are doing something wrong.
 

If it were me, I'd go the desktop route, without a shadow of a doubt

All those Dells, HPs, Gateways, etc. are junk.
Build a nice computer out of quality components or have someone build it for you. 
The only consumer build that is any good is an Apple. But, then you can't use Sonar.

With the laptop you would need a separate USB-audio interface, so it wouldn't be "all-in-one" anyway.
I'd take the desktop route.