I'm a happy Asus zenbook 3 user. I setup arch on it and it's been great so far. Only problem with it is it's crappy audio
Ask HN: Best development laptop?
51–60 of 69 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best development laptop?
#52I'm happy with the 16GB i7 1.4ghz (turbo to 3.6ghz) Macbook. It's retina. It's less than 1kg (2 lbs.). It has between 7-10hrs battery; I can work the entire long haul London to NYC/PHL no problem. I can load a big data set into memory and crunch; I can work on a web app in all the different browsers that I need to (Parallels is brilliant). I have docker. I have Powerpoint. I close the laptop, it goes to sleep. I open…
> If I choose my phone from the WiFi menu, it turns on the tethering. I wonder why we still can't put a Sim card into a laptop.
You are wondering, on an Apple product, why it doesn't have a slot?
Apple will (proudly if I may add) tell you they favor products with minimal inputs. This is kinda their thing..
Re: Ask HN: Best development laptop?
#53A few months ago I would of said a new Asus zenbook with ubuntu LTS 16.04 as everything works out the box and 10hr battery life with Linux, however I had to take to service center recently so they could hard reset it because I switched it off and on too quickly (my taxi arrived just as I switched it on, so immediately held button down again) and it never switch on since. Service center being a bunch of idiots wanted…
I wouldn't recommend XPS. I have version 9350 and it constantly have one problem after another. In no particular order: slow boot time (it can take 7 seconds to see dell logo after pressing power button), coil whine, a firmware update killed the laptop once. I don't know how much of these problems can be attributed to Intel but I fear hardware manufacturers have adopted "release early fix later through firmware" mind…
I have a 2017 XPS 15 (9560) and it has been pretty good with the exception of a 1-2 second pause about once a day. I use it for Windows development.
Re: Ask HN: Best development laptop?
#54A few months ago I would of said a new Asus zenbook with ubuntu LTS 16.04 as everything works out the box and 10hr battery life with Linux, however I had to take to service center recently so they could hard reset it because I switched it off and on too quickly (my taxi arrived just as I switched it on, so immediately held button down again) and it never switch on since. Service center being a bunch of idiots wanted…
[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Best development laptop?
#55[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Best development laptop?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I second this. If you're not into intensive video editing etc. it's probably the best laptop for the price. Battery life being "decent" is underselling it - it has the best battery life of any mainstream laptop, easily lasts 19-20 hours under light workload and 12-13 under intensive work. And for a laptop imo battery life is a very crucial factor.
Are you serious about the 20 hours battery life? So far I haven't seen a laptop that would break 10+ hours on the login screen.
I can't confirm the 20 hours, but I can say that I've never, ever thought about battery life on my MBA. And I'm a lazy fuck who spends at least half-days on the couch with no power outlet regularly.
Re: Ask HN: Best development laptop?
#57If you can live with 8GB RAM and a dual-core i5 at 1.8Ghz, I'd argue that the MBA is one of the best laptops to work with. The selling points for me are: * OSX - still the best all around OS to work with. * Lightweight, it is a laptop that weights ~ 3 pounds * Battery life is decent * Build quality is above average I believe that it's an excellent choice for web development.
OSX is the worst OS to work with.
Besides the fact that it severely limits your hardware choices, it's got terrible window management, terrible file management and trying to operate it with just a keyboard is an exercise in futility.
I'll take Windows or Linux any day over OSX, thanks very much.
Re: Ask HN: Best development laptop?
#58I recently upgraded to a Lenovo Thinkpad p51s with a 1TB SSD and 32GB ram. It is basically a t570 with a better graphics stack. Runs Linux beautifully.
Re: Ask HN: Best development laptop?
#59I have recently bought a refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad X220 for about $200. For that price it is the best machine you can have. It can be upgraded up to 16 GB RAM, I use two disks (SSD in mSATA slot + bigger HDD), awesome connectivity (3 USBs, DisplayPort, Ethernet, docking station, SD card reader). Runs Linux smoothly.
Of course it it weights slightly more then MBP and the display is not Retina, but I'd rather buy 10 of these than one MBP (which I also own so I can compare) for the same price.
Re: Ask HN: Best development laptop?
#60Happy Dell XPS 13 user here. I have been using it for the past 3 years without any issue. In the same timespan many of my coworkers had to replace/return macbooks (kb glitches, screen issues, battery problems etc). I was a thinkpad only person before that, but the quality went downhill. I am tempted to buy a pixelbook and use linux on it next, the specs/price/quality seem just right.
Out of curiosity which version do you have?
XPS 9333 i7 from 2014