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Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

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Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#681

Post by sngz »

bccdee wrote: post #667
rootusrootus wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior? That is a good question. But ... > They seem to want to push everyone to use Mac, like religious fanatics try to push everyone to their "truth". As soon as you can adequately explain why there are people that are vehemently anti-Apple, you will have the answer to this question. You make it sound like it's only pro-Apple people that are fanatics.

> people that are vehemently anti-Apple This is just it though! You're not describing "Apple fanatics versus Windows fanatics," you're describing "Apple fanatics versus people with an irrational and excessive hatred of Apple fanaticism." Why does this culture exist specifically around Apple?

can't speak for others. but personally I'm forced to use macbooks at my last 2 companies. Tried to make the case for getting a dell XPS with linux installed but they refused to support it. Other than that I have senior family members that have trouble figuring out how to use an iphone, between the lack of SD card slot forcing them to navigate how to pay and use iCloud, and figuring out all the dongles with the lack of headphone jack now. They would keep harassing me to help them with their issues.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#682

Post by aunty_helen »

emptyfile wrote: post #409
kayodelycaon wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> result of some marketing tactics Apple employed for decades Or perhaps people really like macOS and their value system is different. I don't think a lot of developers are buying macs due to marketing. Also, Linux attracts the same fanatic behavior. If you like linux, you don't notice see how many people are pushing it. If you like macOS, you're more likely to notice the people pushing linux because you disagree wit…

>I don't think a lot of developers are buying macs due to marketing. I've never seen a developer with a macbook in my country. The idea sounds absurd. Unless you need Final Cut or whatever, Apple is considered a status brand in many parts of the world.

Server side dev here, I use mac. I picked up using mac when I was working in a company making hf forex systems where everyone used a mac.

Why? Because Linux desktop is garbage (I daily one now too) and gets in the way. Mac you can do anything you need to do in Linux, open terminal nooo problems buddy. brew install whatever you want then switch to a nice interface with a good touchpad that you don't have to half compile yourself.

So after going it alone why did I shell out a stupid amount of money to continue using a mac when my company wasn't providing one? Because now my livelyhood depends on my laptop. I don't want things getting in the way, I don't want things breaking or having to boot into a virtual machine to get something done.

When there's $s involved it's a different caluclation. Total income = hours worked - purchase cost of laptop - hours fluffing around with my dev environment

Therefore, if my linux laptop was to die (like one of my dev's linux laptops did on Monday night) and then I was to miss a day of work, I could afford the difference between a linux craptop and a mac in lost productivity.

As for poor countries not using the best tools, I would say this is systemic. People in Colombia don't appreciate it, you see very few of the locals here using macbooks. But their time is also billed a lot lower.

A Swiss guy one told me that "the right tool is half the job", as much as the Colombians idolise the Germans and Swiss, they've still got a lot to learn.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#683

Post by mwilliamson »

Freaken wrote: post #276

I can vouch for the Framework. It doesn't feel beta at all. I'm running Xubuntu 21.10 on it an it rocks. Someone created a repo with salt scripts which works all the kinks of the laptop under Ubuntu. The only thing I needed it for was to fix the touchpad issue after resume from sleep (it would be at max acceleration) and to enable hibernate (just note that you must disable secure boot first). https://github.com/light…

I've also gotten a Framework laptop, and am happily running XFCE on Debian testing.

One thing I'm curious about is how other people are handling the resolution of the screen on Linux? It doesn't seem like XFCE currently supports fractional scaling well, so I ended up defining a custom 3:2 resolution and using that to increase the size of everything by about 1.5x.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#684

Post by tshaddox »

rmbyrro wrote: post #326
JabavuAdams wrote: post #200

** "I don't want to use a Mac" ** "I've had these problems with Mac" Reasonable response: Cool, use what works for you. EDIT> Here are some suggestions that match your constraints. Annoying response 1: You should reconsider because Mac works great for me. Annoying response 2: Your problems aren't real problems. Annoying response 3: Let's live debug your problems in this thread to see if they're real problems. Guys. I…

Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior? They seem to want to push everyone to use Mac, like religious fanatics try to push everyone to their "truth". I think this is a result of some marketing tactics Apple employed for decades, and it only pushes me away from this brand.

Consider the possibility that people can like Macs for reasons entirely unrelated to Apple's marketing tactics. Reasons can include things most people would agree are legitimate qualities to look for in computers, like build quality, display quality, keyboard quality, performance, battery life, etc. Those seem to me as more legitimate and less "fanatical" reasons to prefer computers from a particular manufacturer than the reason you provided, which is that you dislike some (certainly not all, and likely a vanishingly small portion) people who also buy computers from that same manufacturer.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#685

Post by lhl »

xvello wrote: post #147
radicalbyte wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only particularly disappointing thing is that the battery drains mega fast while suspended That's a killer - it's 2022 and Apple are still the only company who can get that right. I'd switch over to a Framework in an instant (for dual-boot Linux/Windows) if they could fix that.

Intel has removed support for S3 sleep from their platform, so every laptop with 11th+ generation Intel is plagued with this issue. Dell even put out an advisory that a sleeping laptop is not safe to store in a backpack anymore! AMD still supports S3 sleep on their Ryzen processors, but you'll need to check user feedback to make sure that the vendor did their job implementing it properly. In S3 sleep, the UEFI/BIOS i…

While this is true for most vendors, this is not universally true. Lenovo specifically has an S3 BIOS option for some of their Tiger Lake Thinkpads (since they're Linux certified), although as you mention, it isn't always perfect: https://forums.lenovo.com/topic/view/27/5089860

There can be lots of EC/BIOS issues for suspending, IMO it's one of the best arguments for going for a Linux-first vendor (Tuxedo, System 76, Slimbook, etc), as you know that their top priority should be to get basic stuff working on Linux.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#686

Post by U1F984 »

noduerme wrote: post #192

This is probably an unpopular view, but I kind of use laptops as if they were terminals. If you want to spend $2k, I'd invest $1600 of that in a great desktop machine, and spend the other $400 on a cheap chromebook and tablets / keyboards / gizmos to log into it remotely.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a remote desktop software for Linux? Specifically one that also supports using a browser, video, etc. RDP (server) with proper GPU acceleration works great for this, but unfortunately is Windows only.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#687

Post by usui »

ramblerman wrote: post #361
JabavuAdams wrote: post #200

** "I don't want to use a Mac" ** "I've had these problems with Mac" Reasonable response: Cool, use what works for you. EDIT> Here are some suggestions that match your constraints. Annoying response 1: You should reconsider because Mac works great for me. Annoying response 2: Your problems aren't real problems. Annoying response 3: Let's live debug your problems in this thread to see if they're real problems. Guys. I…

Your comment is currently on top, so instead of laptop recommendations, we have yet another navel gazing meta discussion about HN and it's tendencies.

I've read the entire thread and took note of all the top-level responses that talked about Macs before the parent was posted versus the ones not talking about Macs. There are what, 4-5 mentions about getting a Mac out of dozens of non-Mac recommendations? Barely anyone gave those Mac comments attention before they were downvoted to the end anyway.

Parent just seems to have an axe to grind and took the opportunity to hijack a thread about recommendations.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#688

Post by jjcm »

swah wrote: post #629
nicoburns wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new M1 Mac’s really are impressive. I suspect I might be similarly impressed by the latest AMD chips with 8 cores, but quite a lot of my everyday workloads are seeing 5x-10x performance increases over my previous 2015 MacBook.

Even the cheapest M1s?

Have the cheapest M1. It flies and the battery life is stellar. The only downside I would say is it's only 8GB of RAM. If you're doing anything with electron development, it's a no-go. You'll need a minimum of 16GB.

It's an incredible machine though. The perf and battery life remind me of the upgrade I got when switching from a HDD to a SSD for the first time. It changes how I use the device.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#689

Post by drusepth »

derbOac wrote: post #406

I'm in a similar boat and the ones you're mentioning are all ones I've considered, along with some in the comments. Just to throw one more out I haven't seen mentioned is Razer. I haven't purchased one but have played around with them in person. The Razer Blade laptops in particular seem really nice to me, with nice build, screen and very nice touchpad, in a good form factor and nice specs. The MacBook Pro is maybe t…

Would definitely second Razer. The build quality and touchpad are the best I've ever used and the only real downside is the price. But if it's in the budget, I'd definitely recommend.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#690

Post by drusepth »

daenney wrote: post #18

The problem I run into with a lot of these is that their screens aren’t great. 1080p@60Hz and usually pretty terrible brightness makes them a bad fit for me as a travel companion, or even just working from my garden. It’s also annoying that some keep insisting on a barrel connector for charging instead of leveraging the USB-C port. As much as I appreciate the privacy and freedom enhancing aspects of some of these dev…

One small note on the screen (especially wrt travel and/or OP's requirement for a good battery life): "worse" screens will often give significantly better battery life. I downgraded my 4K/60 to a 1080/60 on purpose and tripled my battery life on otherwise-identical specs (3 to 9 hours on two Razer Blade Stealth models).

Great points, though. Especially brightness -- even if you don't need all those nits for day-to-day use, they're great to have as an option when you do! Don't skimp on the screen specs that matter to you.

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