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

Ask HN: Best Laptop for Developer?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 71 posts

Re: Ask HN: Best Laptop for Developer?

#21

Post by y4mi »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #8

alienware. it glows and has an alien head on it

Yes, it clearly fulfills the light criteria by lighting up when it's powered on.

The trivial gain in weight can be ignored. What's a kilogram or two compared to your body weight after all!

It's especially well thought out considering the price point of gaming laptops. They'll surely be in the budget range if he doesn't want to spent a lot of money.

Finally, as it's a gaming laptop, it's gonna ship with Windows preinstalled. Don't fret though, you can always install some 'nix on it yourself! Battery life is gonna be at least 30 minutes as well without any driver optimizations and you'll always be warm when you use it!

Did I forget anything?

(Disclaimer: I never actually used any Alienware hardware with Linux... So I guess it could be the best Linux laptops ever)

Re: Ask HN: Best Laptop for Developer?

#22

Post by johnsea »

With not much budget, many of the recomendations like e.g. the T480s seem too expensive.

I'd recommend a secondhand ThinkPad from the T series and suggest to ask on the reddit thinkpad forum with more details (budget, size).

Re: Ask HN: Best Laptop for Developer?

#24

Post by throwitawayfam »

greatjack613 wrote: post #5

Matebook x pro, try to get the 2018 one due to its higher performance (weirdly) than the 2019 one. Also linux works great on it, and build quality is a smigen under apple but very very close. Oh and the keyboard works :)

Does the touchpad support gestures and does any driver exist for it? That's the biggest thing keeping me on macOS

Re: Ask HN: Best Laptop for Developer?

#26

Post by 300bps »

ConceitedCode wrote: post #11

I use a Thinkpad t480s (last years model). This laptop has done a great job "getting out my way". It has one of the best keyboards on any laptop I have used. It runs ubuntu great out of the box. 14in screen happens to be be a very nice size for me. I have the touchscreen model which has been nice for testing mobile sites. The screen could be a little brighter / more vibrant, but I do prefer the matte display for when…

Did a lot of research on my last purchase and it came down to a Thinkpad T480s or Thinkpad Carbon X1 and I ended up going with the Carbon because it's so much lighter and thinner while still having an i7, 16 GB of RAM and SSD.

And I bought it from Costco which was a great price and doubled the factory warranty for free, gives free tech support for a year and a ridiculous 90 day return policy.

And the battery lasts 10+ hours which is amazing.

Re: Ask HN: Best Laptop for Developer?

#27

Post by soamv »

I'll throw in yet another recommendation for the Dell XPS 13". I'm using the 9380. It's light, thin, and has an excellent keyboard, and good battery life. The higher resolution screen option is beautiful, but it does drive the price up.

Re: Ask HN: Best Laptop for Developer?

#28

Post by ct0 »

The x1 carbon line is very light weight, and the generation 6 has been widely adopted. But for cheap a refurbished x230 x250 seam to be still very popular. check out reddit.com/r/thinkpads
Post reply on HN