Back in high school and college I worked for a laser light show company (in addition to lecturing at the planetarium -- best job ever!). Back then a 10W green laser was at a desk sized affair, fragile and needing frequent alignment, requring about 10kW of 3-phase power and water cooling like a garden hose on full. We used to dream about the day that solid-state laser technology would get to this point. Ah, progress.

10W is an impressive amount of power; it's the sort of thing used for beams at an outdoor concert. Roughly comparable to having a soldering iron tip you can place up against anything in your line of sight, though the dispersion is probably enough to keep it from having cutting/burning power at anything but close range. Could blind people a LONG way away, though.