I have a Dell Venue Pro 11 with it's keyboard dock, that I got for around $250 in total used on eBay. It's pretty good. It was a bit sluggish on Windows 10, but I run Elementary OS on it and it's been smooth sailing.
Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
41–50 of 165 posts
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#42I'd recommend Lenovo laptops. I have a Thinkpad T460s, which is awesome. If you really want the tablet/laptop hybrid, maybe a Thinkpad X1 Yoga, or something from the 'regular' Yoga series will work for you. Yoga-series laptops start at around $500, whereas the premium X1 Yoga starts at something like $1.400 I believe. Edit: Linux support on Lenovo laptops is pretty good overall, and if you're a Windows person, they s…
Seconded. I have a T440S which go for around 300 used. Decently thin and light with 100pct linux support and one of the last "real" lenovo typing friendly keyboards. Note the Yogas, Carbon, etc. all have chicklet keys now.
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#43If you are a power multi-tasker (20+ browser tabs at any given time) running IntelliJ with a couple of electron apps (Slack, Spotify), it will slow down your system with constant disk-thrashing on a 8 GB machine even with an SSD. I use a Macbook Pro 2015 (8GB RAM/128 GB SSD) and I cannot run a fully featured IDE anymore. No more WebStorm or RubyMine. Vim is the only way to go! You're a little bit in luck as Windows m…
To contrast, I'm on a 4+ yr old MBA with 8GB RAM and the 120GB SSD and I run IntelliJ IDEA, Safari with dozens of tabs, iTunes, and usually one other text editor (VS Code or ST3) without any compromises.
I'm not sure what's happening with your system, but maybe it's not happening properly.
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#44Xiaomi Notebook Air 12.5 is a good ultrabook, it has a good build quality and Linux support https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9xqJK2Hlb3U
It is very hard to get hold of one in west for anything close to the original price.
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#45If you are a power multi-tasker (20+ browser tabs at any given time) running IntelliJ with a couple of electron apps (Slack, Spotify), it will slow down your system with constant disk-thrashing on a 8 GB machine even with an SSD. I use a Macbook Pro 2015 (8GB RAM/128 GB SSD) and I cannot run a fully featured IDE anymore. No more WebStorm or RubyMine. Vim is the only way to go! You're a little bit in luck as Windows m…
20+ browser tabs at any given time
Are you browsing with Chrome?
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#46I'd recommend Lenovo laptops. I have a Thinkpad T460s, which is awesome. If you really want the tablet/laptop hybrid, maybe a Thinkpad X1 Yoga, or something from the 'regular' Yoga series will work for you. Yoga-series laptops start at around $500, whereas the premium X1 Yoga starts at something like $1.400 I believe. Edit: Linux support on Lenovo laptops is pretty good overall, and if you're a Windows person, they s…
I saw the Yoga, but I wanted to spend around $250 or less on this. I have 2 laptops and a desktop which are great for programming, but I wouldn't want to risk bringing an expensive laptop to this trip, I want something portable and cheap in case I get robbed or something, with the convenience of a tablet when I just need to read an ebook or browse some webs, and the ability to do more advanced stuff with a keyboard a…
I see. Perhaps a tablet (can't recommend any, I've never owned one) with a bluetooth keyboard is a solution?
Myabe you can also find a used Yoga or use two devices; a cheap laptop and a cheap tablet?
I feel like a hybrid laptop/tablet is a bit cumbersome as just an e-reader anyway? Not sure...
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#47I use similar tablets for development, and I think 4gb of ram is pushing it, if you want to have, for example a heavier web browser and a larger IDE open at the same time.
It is doable though if you are willing to spend some time tuning your device, e.g. set the priority for some tasks lower than they want, so they don't hog the system resources while doing something. http://www.wikihow.com/Change-Process-Priorities-in-Windows-... I ran a 2gb ram, 10", dual core atom for 4ish years by doing this and using a lightweight browser, like opera or ie.
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#48Don'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.
How about for app development? I got a small Windows 10 Chinese tablet that I want to use for testing Windows 10 UWP apps but don't want to open it (haven't had time to use it yet) if it wouldn't be worth it.
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#49I have a budget ultrabook based on Pentium N3700. Despite the name it is also Atom core based and essentially just a tiny bit faster on paper than Z8300. Same 4 Gb memory and HDD instead of flash drive. Windows 10 installed.
It boots up for a long long time. Win10 uses about 2.8Gb in idle state (which is good and bad both). Any significant drive activity locks the system for good - antivirus scan firing up, overloaded browser etc. Battery lifetime, despite having a 6 Watt SoC with integrated video and DDR3 memory, is average - maybe 4-5 hours top, doing nothing. My big old 15" laptop with 45 Watt cpu, geforce video and other older stuff lasted for 3 hours while it was new.
I used Visual Studio on it - it is possible but painful. Building code takes significantly slower, all actions are slow. But it can cope with MSVS, open browser, books, iTunes and some other stuff simultaneously. Development in lightweight editors should be way better.
64Gb of storage for Win10 with IDEs should be just barely enough and I would not recommend that.
If possible you should put inside 128Gb or bigger ssd and more RAM, I plan to do that at some point.
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#50I'd recommend Lenovo laptops. I have a Thinkpad T460s, which is awesome. If you really want the tablet/laptop hybrid, maybe a Thinkpad X1 Yoga, or something from the 'regular' Yoga series will work for you. Yoga-series laptops start at around $500, whereas the premium X1 Yoga starts at something like $1.400 I believe. Edit: Linux support on Lenovo laptops is pretty good overall, and if you're a Windows person, they s…
I saw the Yoga, but I wanted to spend around $250 or less on this. I have 2 laptops and a desktop which are great for programming, but I wouldn't want to risk bringing an expensive laptop to this trip, I want something portable and cheap in case I get robbed or something, with the convenience of a tablet when I just need to read an ebook or browse some webs, and the ability to do more advanced stuff with a keyboard a…
What about a second-hand Yoga 2 Pro? This should be in that price range now, roughly.
I've been using this for a couple of years now and was quite happy. It's a good trade-off between performance, weight and size in my opinion. Except some minor inconveniences[1], my Linux/Windows dualboot setup works quite well.
Heads-up: If you consider it's successor, the Yoga 900, make sure you don't get one of the series not supporting Linux (Google is your friend).
[1]: The biggest issue I've faced is inaccuracy of yellow colors on the display; they're dark and pale. Lenovo published a BIOS fix for Windows, but this doesn't work for Linux. However, if you don't plan to do any visual work like photo editing or designing color palettes, you should be fine.