What's the point in having engineers who can't engineer because their tools are inadequate? Would you hire a carpenter to work on your office who offered to give you a 2% discount, because he has to stop several times a day to fix broken tools?
I find it bleakly amusing that so many blue-collar companies have no trouble putting a $10/hour worker in front of a $100,000 machine, while white-collar companies will do anything to avoid putting a $50/hour engineer in front of a $2000 machine.
Engineers that can't engineers, can't engineer. Are we talking about tools that can't do the job or "the best tools money can buy" vs your average computer? I could care less if my carpenter has a Dewalt power drill or a Festool power drill.
Seems like something you could quantify pretty easily. Arstechnica or Phronix or someone could build up a $1000 machine, a $2000 machine and a $10000 machine and build various open source projects on each and publish the times.
IDE reaction time might be harder to quantify but I bet you could do it.
My hunch from 10000 feet, you'll see an appreciable difference between like $1000 and $2000 but between $2000 and $10000 it won't be that substantial or it could be attributed to a $300 upgrade (SSD vs. spinning platters) or something.
If the difference is that big, nobody would ask this question, everybody would have $12000 workstations on their desk at work and $5000 laptops to carry home, that's just how it would be.
I find it bleakly amusing that so many blue-collar companies have no trouble putting a $10/hour worker in front of a $100,000 machine, while white-collar companies will do anything to avoid putting a $50/hour engineer in front of a $2000 machine.