Oh, well.

For as the primary functionality of your local computer is as a desktop then you do indeed need to be running a server(be it a VPS, dedicated server or whatever).

Otherwise, then I would ask the question? What do you use your local computer for? Playing games? Sounds childish

The bottomline will remain, there's functionality you can get from a $5/month VPS that you can never get out of a desktop. Do I really need to list them? Probably not because they're too obvious. I mean, a server gives you access to the internet.

But, anyways, I forget servers are not useful anymore because we have all move to the AI protocol :-)