Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 165 posts

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#151

Post by mindrunner »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #54
mindrunner wrote: post #5

Don't even bother with those Chinese tablets. They are passable for media consumption, but absymal for anything else. Buy something like a refurbished Dell Latitude series instead. Keyword here is you said "long trip'. When you buy something that made a lot of tradeoffs to achieve that price point, you are going to be frustrated.

I'm considering one for media consumption (Netflix, high-bitrate 1080p video) - do any have good battery life?

It will play fine. In my case, this is what I realised.

* I bought it thinking that this would be a cheap Win10 based Netflix / Comic Reader. Windows 10 is not really a touch friendly OS. You will end up booting into Android and installing apps. Even then, there are frequent crashes / Some apps won't work because the Tablet does not meet DRM requirements.

* Netflix on Android only runs in HD with certified devices. Else you're going to be getting streams in 480p max.

* I apologise for the Caps. I got burnt by 2 of these tablets. (My fault, because I was expecting an iPad like experience without paying the price). I'm hoping that I can give you what to expect if you decide to buy one.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#152

Post by mindrunner »

kyriakos wrote: post #71
akhilcacharya wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm considering one for media consumption (Netflix, high-bitrate 1080p video) - do any have good battery life?

There's a site and YouTube channel called techtablets.com, the guy does good (and possibly unbiased) reviews of most of these tablets you should check it out it will answer your question.

techtablets.com is great. In fact, I got my tablet based on his reviews. There is a hidden subtext behind his reviews though. He already knows what he should expect for the price he is paying. Thus, his reviews are based on what all tablets in that price point offers.

I went in thinking that the specs on paper would turn out to be great value for money. That was my biggest mistake.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#153

Post by mindrunner »

bostand wrote: post #143
eustar wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There're two Chinese online shops doing quite sophisticated shipping to EU countries via UK. This seems to be legal and you get it for the Chinese price.

Do you happen to have a link?

You can buy them from sites like banggood.com / gearbest.com.

They are pretty reliable. But in my honest opinion, That kind of money should just be spent in the Dell Outlet. Get something like the Latitude 7270 / 7470 or the Latitude 7275 (Sort of a surface clone). At least warranties would be easier and you have Dell's support.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#154

Post by amorphid »

yellowapple wrote: post #120
amorphid wrote: post #60

I was playing around with the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) a couple weeks ago. I tried & failed to install two programs on WSL, Elixir & Debootstrap. It's worth mentioning that WSL isn't intended to be 100% Linux compatible. From the WSL FAQ ( https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/faq ): Can I run ALL Linux apps in WSL? No! WSL is a tool aimed at enabling users who need them to run Bash and core Linux…

Doesn't Erlang (and thus Elixir) have a native Windows version anyway? Or was that just a test to try out WSL?

Elixir does have a Windows installer. And yes, I was testing out the WSL.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#155

Post by SamReidHughes »

imglorp wrote: post #42
tronje wrote: post #25

I'd recommend Lenovo laptops. I have a Thinkpad T460s, which is awesome. If you really want the tablet/laptop hybrid, maybe a Thinkpad X1 Yoga, or something from the 'regular' Yoga series will work for you. Yoga-series laptops start at around $500, whereas the premium X1 Yoga starts at something like $1.400 I believe. Edit: Linux support on Lenovo laptops is pretty good overall, and if you're a Windows person, they s…

Seconded. I have a T440S which go for around 300 used. Decently thin and light with 100pct linux support and one of the last "real" lenovo typing friendly keyboards. Note the Yogas, Carbon, etc. all have chicklet keys now.

The T440s has chicklet keys. And that's not what makes a keyboard good or bad for typing.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#156

Post by jagtesh »

gcp wrote: post #45
jagtesh wrote: post #7

If you are a power multi-tasker (20+ browser tabs at any given time) running IntelliJ with a couple of electron apps (Slack, Spotify), it will slow down your system with constant disk-thrashing on a 8 GB machine even with an SSD. I use a Macbook Pro 2015 (8GB RAM/128 GB SSD) and I cannot run a fully featured IDE anymore. No more WebStorm or RubyMine. Vim is the only way to go! You're a little bit in luck as Windows m…

20+ browser tabs at any given time Are you browsing with Chrome?

Yep, I use Chrome mainly because I like the developer tools on Chrome better.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#157

Post by jagtesh »

BoorishBears wrote: post #14
jagtesh wrote: post #7

If you are a power multi-tasker (20+ browser tabs at any given time) running IntelliJ with a couple of electron apps (Slack, Spotify), it will slow down your system with constant disk-thrashing on a 8 GB machine even with an SSD. I use a Macbook Pro 2015 (8GB RAM/128 GB SSD) and I cannot run a fully featured IDE anymore. No more WebStorm or RubyMine. Vim is the only way to go! You're a little bit in luck as Windows m…

> I use a Macbook Pro 2015 (8GB RAM/128 GB SSD) and I cannot run a fully featured IDE anymore. No more WebStorm or RubyMine. Vim is the only way to go! I use an identical i5 model with Android Studio (think IntelliJ with more resource usage), an Android emulator/VM, a Gradle daemon taking up 2-3GBs for builds, Safari with umpteen tabs, Slack, Outlook and Spotify open and don't have issues with disk thrashing (or at l…

I'm not forced, I quite like working on Vim. However I develop on a multi-app setup, 3 backend services and 4 npm based frontend apps with watchers and works running in background. RubyMine/Webstorm has a hard time keeping up and the memory usage shoots up to several gigabytes. As for Slack, I counted just now - the compressed memory usage is ~750MB! These things seem insignificant but do add up, especially with Chrome which itself takes a few gigabytes.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#158

Post by bostand »

eustar wrote: post #110
bpicolo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to be purchasable on their site? http://xiaomi-mi.com/notebooks/xiaomi-mi-notebook-air-125-si... With this disclaimer: Please pay attention: both versions of Mi Notebook Air will be run on Windows 10 Home Chinese Edition

This is no problem. You can get a Windows key on ebay or Amazon for 20 bucks and reinstall an English version or as I did Linux (Arch).

What happens if you just reinstall a standard win10 image from usb?

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#159

Post by jetti »

mindrunner wrote: post #150
jetti wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about for app development? I got a small Windows 10 Chinese tablet that I want to use for testing Windows 10 UWP apps but don't want to open it (haven't had time to use it yet) if it wouldn't be worth it.

I have a Chuwi. Honestly, from the get go, you will know that its not a development machine. As for testing apps, If you wish to simulate the user experience on a cheap Atom, this would be the thing for your. Else, you're bound to be frustrated.

Thanks. I misspoke, I meant to that I want to use it as a testing device and not a development device. I don't think I could do development on a 13" laptop let alone a tablet

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#160

Post by dotdi »

KurtMueller wrote: post #57
dotdi wrote: post #3

I would never go for less than 8gigs of RAM for a dev machine. My current machine sports 8GB and it's often frustrating.

What languages do you program in and what toolsets do you use?

Depends, but most of the time it's either

- Java: Eclipse and the actual application running that I am working on, or

- JS: Sublime, a server for running and testing, a few Chrome tabs + Chrome Dev Tools.

While both of those would work fine with 8Gigs, if I ever happen to have to run more things (as in, the aforementioned things at the same time or a VM next to any of them) at the same time, things slow down considerably.

Post reply on HN