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Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

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Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#71

Post by kyriakos »

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?

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.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#72

Post by tmaly »

The 15 inch Acer Chromebook allows you to upgrade the SSD to a larger one for around $50 and you can install Linux on it as a dual boot.

I paid around $225 for my Chromebook on Amazon.

This particular model will is slated to get Android app store support sometime this year.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#73

Post by dagw »

rhodysurf wrote: post #61
dagw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell is releasing a version of the XPS 13 that converts to a tablet. Although I doubt it will classify as cheap

Also only with Core M processors I think

The latest iteration seem to ship with 7th gen i7 or i5 processors, but the lowest powered and slowest Y-series versions of those processors. No idea what that means in real-world performance though.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#74

Post by eustar »

poyu wrote: post #65
eustar wrote: post #55

I recently bought the Xiaomi Mi Air 12. tl;dr, it's the best ultrabook/notebook I've ever had and run Arch on it. I was looking for a light notebook also for programming for a long, long time (and I wanted this time Linux because of tiling window managers like i3). I finally got this Chinese model and what can I say, inside it's all Intel (Wifi, BT), Arch works flawlessly, touchpad is a glass trackpad and is for a no…

How's the build quality, comparing to other ultra books like ZenBook or MacBook. I don't have a chance to play with one yet.

Build quality is excellent, the aluminum is like that on Macbooks, it's very close, maybe slighlty rougher and the edges are a bit sharper. But you really need to have both next to each other to 'feel' this difference. It's a bit sad that they followed so closely Apple's design language and didn't create their own identity.

The glass trackpad has the same build quality as an Apple device without the 3D force thing. The keyboard as said excellent, it's similar to to last gen Macbook Pros but still different, it's clicky and nice to write on, good spaced keys.

The screen excellent, the lid when opening a bit less stiff than a Macbook. I don't know if they did this on purpose to let the device open with one hand...

Comparing to the Zenbooks: same build quality, case is much less fingerprint prone than Zenbooks and the trackpad is better since it's glass, I don't think the Zenbooks have glass trackpads. I'd also say that the keyboard of the Xiaomi is better than the last gen Zenbooks, they had mushy/shallow keyboards. I think they solved this with the new slimmer gen.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#75

Post by Const-me »

Programming something professionally in C++, definitely no. The main factor is CPU, #2 is RAM amount.

But if by programming you mean learn python or C#, most likely yes.

P.S. Couple months ago bought Acer V3-372-34W8. Not an ultrabook, but weights under 1.5 kg, not too large, thanks to its Iris GPU has 64MB of L4 CPU cache, and unlike real ultrabooks this one is upgradable.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#76

Post by GiorgioG »

I bought the Hi10 Pro + keyboard and it arrived Sunday. Last night it refused to turn on, got warm, then got uncomfortably hot. It's going back to Amazon today and I've ordered an iPad Pro (for my needs it's a better fit anyway (reading brooks.))

General observations - Windows was sluggish, no way you're going to be happy with IntelliJ performance on it. I installed VS Code but did not attempt any real work on it. Yes you can install any Windows app on it. The keyboard attachment is really heavy.

Get a 12" MacBook or similar laptop. They are more reliable, powerful and seemingly less likely to catch fire due to cheap electronics.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#78

Post by coredog64 »

jpalomaki wrote: post #63
johngalt wrote: post #56

Considering your goals and price range. I'd recommend shopping the refurb market. Specifically business laptops that are off lease. Bigcorp IT departments tend to cycle their hardware every 3-4 years and flood the market with used cheap/good used laptops. They won't be 'ultrabooks' but they will be cheap, reliable and easy to maintain. Something like a Dell E6430 would be a good bet. https://www.dellrefurbished.com/l…

I second this opinion. There are for example lots of people who are happy with older Lenovo models. Performance wise you don't need to loose that much, since the Intel CPUs are not getting that much faster. Pick up some good model (for example on Lenovo side look at X2x0 or the T4x0 (where x=2,3,4,5,6) models) and swap HDD with some reasonably priced SSD and put in max memory.

The SSD is key for the Latitude e6xxx. Some of my co-workers are stuck with those and spinning rust and they are hot garbage.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#79

Post by ilyagr »

johngalt wrote: post #56

Considering your goals and price range. I'd recommend shopping the refurb market. Specifically business laptops that are off lease. Bigcorp IT departments tend to cycle their hardware every 3-4 years and flood the market with used cheap/good used laptops. They won't be 'ultrabooks' but they will be cheap, reliable and easy to maintain. Something like a Dell E6430 would be a good bet. https://www.dellrefurbished.com/l…

This is a great idea. I'd recommend looking at a refurbished surface pro 3, those shouldn't be that expensive by now.
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