11–20 of 21 posts
i place a lot of value on computer interfaces, so monitors or stands, headphones and microphones, camera, keyboard and mouse depending on the limits, chair and desk are also items i've been happy to spend more on
SSH over LAN (while you’re at hone) is much snappier than you’d expect if your only experience with SSH is to an AWS data center. Slap Tailscale on both machines, and now you can access the home PC from anywhere on the road. Heck, you can even access it from a phone in a pinch with a mobile SSH client.
With this setup you get native macOS and Linux (no docker nor VM required), power, portability, and battery life. It’s not the best solution for everyone but it’s working pretty well for me.
4k 28" monitor -- ~250-300 + tax Aeron chair -- say ~300 used or the Costco office chair which IMO is comparale comfort Sit stand desk from Costco -- $300 M1 Mac Mini 16/512
If you already have a decent computer though then think about the other things e.g a nice monitor, comfortable chair, good keyboard/mouse, headset etc
Personally I'd always say focus on comfort and making your work enciornemnt pleasant
If you're just working from home this setup would be great: 4k 28" monitor -- ~250-300 + tax Aeron chair -- say ~300 used or the Costco office chair which IMO is comparale comfort Sit stand desk from Costco -- $300 M1 Mac Mini 16/512
Also, upgrading your headphones to the 200-300$ range is worth it if you listen to music while working (Noise Cancelling/Bluetooth)
$2000 only buys the absolute base model 14”, so it doesn’t give you much to play with. If you are expecting to buy a laptop & accessories out of that, you’re going to struggle :/ That said, I always recommend a good external monitor, a comfortable keyboard and mouse/trackball/touchpad, and a good chair.
Depending on what peripherals you already have, something that has been working well for me is using a cheap MacBook Air to ssh into a custom-built desktop PC running Linux under my desk. For work you probably care more about memory and CPU power (vs the PC gamer who cares about a big graphics card). So for $1000 you can get an M1 MacBook Air and with the other $1000 you can buy components for a 12 or 16 core desktop…
Depending on what peripherals you already have, something that has been working well for me is using a cheap MacBook Air to ssh into a custom-built desktop PC running Linux under my desk. For work you probably care more about memory and CPU power (vs the PC gamer who cares about a big graphics card). So for $1000 you can get an M1 MacBook Air and with the other $1000 you can buy components for a 12 or 16 core desktop…
Is the Linux box setup similar to your work prod environment? Can you run a GUI code editor like VS Code on Linux and access it via MacBook Air?
Depending on what peripherals you already have, something that has been working well for me is using a cheap MacBook Air to ssh into a custom-built desktop PC running Linux under my desk. For work you probably care more about memory and CPU power (vs the PC gamer who cares about a big graphics card). So for $1000 you can get an M1 MacBook Air and with the other $1000 you can buy components for a 12 or 16 core desktop…
Is the Linux box setup similar to your work prod environment? Can you run a GUI code editor like VS Code on Linux and access it via MacBook Air?