111–120 of 163 posts
I just got a Dell precision 15 with ubuntu 14.04, $2K after tax - I returned it because the wifi rarely works, The gpu switching makes the gpu basically unusable because of screen tearing ( X.org sucks), and the battery life still is terrible( without some heavy optimizations). In 2016 it is sad that there still isn't a good seamless hardware/software linux laptop out of the box, It could be a great OS for day to day…
I know a lot of people are suggesting MacBook pros and airs, which is great if you want both OS X and Linux, but.. apple = $$$. Part of what you pay for is OS X so if you want a Linux machine this is silly. If you don't specifically need Linux just Unix then I can't possibly recommend OS X highly enough. Also Linux distros and Mac hardware plays pretty well together but you WILL run into issues. My personal recurring…
I have a Dell Chromebook 13. Basically it is a Macbook Pro that happens to run Linux really well. I have used Thinkpads X (200, 201, 220) in the past, then switched to Chromebook C720, then this. After you install John Lewis' ROM (basically a Coreboot build), it is an absolute dream, and everything worked out of the box, wifi, bt, 3d acceleration, suspend/resume, audio jack detection, you name it. Trackpad is really…
I have a Dell Chromebook 13. Basically it is a Macbook Pro that happens to run Linux really well. I have used Thinkpads X (200, 201, 220) in the past, then switched to Chromebook C720, then this. After you install John Lewis' ROM (basically a Coreboot build), it is an absolute dream, and everything worked out of the box, wifi, bt, 3d acceleration, suspend/resume, audio jack detection, you name it. Trackpad is really…
if only they had a normal capacity HDD ...
Sure, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (4rd gen) looks thinner, but at the thickest point, at 16.9 mm the T460s is only 3% thicker than the X1 at 16.35 mm. Also the 1.4 kg vs 1.2 kg weight difference is not big.
T460s is easier to open, if you want to add memory or change the SSD drive, or change other components. T460s still had a traditional RJ45 port for ethernet cable. With X1 you need an usb-adapter, or always use wifi.
For both you can choose a 1920x1080 or 2560x1440 screen resolution.
My general advice would be to check the Arch wiki ( https://www.archlinux.org/ ), whether you intend to run Arch or not. It's a pretty good indicator to determine how much support you're going to get with the laptop and whether things generally work as they're supposed to. For example, here's the page for my laptop: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_%282015%29
The developer ver is sold natively with Ubuntu.
My Thinkpad T440S from 2014 works almost great under Ubuntu 14.04. Everything's going properly (keyboard, battery, etc) but the Wifi is not. Seems like a RTL8192EE isn't a linux' first class citizen :/ Btw I tried different distros before sticking with Ubuntu 14.04: it really the most finished (at least on my t440s).
The driver for the Realtek card may have improved by now: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1239578
Another solution is to buy a suitable Intel wifi card from ebay for $10-$20, open the laptop, and switch it in.
If you want a 15in, MacBook Retina Pro w/ bootcamp. If you want a 13in, I honestly feel the Dell XPS 13 Developer edition is amazing, better than the 13in Retina Macbook Pro IMO.
We use Dell's Precision 15 5000 laptops. We get them with a Xeon E3-1505M and Quadro M1000M, which performs great in what we're doing (simulation, extremely multithreaded sensor processing, etc.). They're not cheap, but if you want "the best", I'd say they're a good candidate.
According to dell.com, it seems there is no option for ECC ram on this device.
The sadness continues...