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Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

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Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#141

Post by beryleo »

gamache wrote: post #130
jpalomaki wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just bought a 2015 Thinkpad T450 from eBay (I do mean "just bought", it hasn't even arrived yet). Beware the T440 and earlier because they max out at 8GB RAM. I got a T450 with an i7 processor and 8GB RAM expandable to 32GB, and it came in under $500 including the fancy Thinkpad dock. In general, nothing runs Linux quite like Last Year's Model.

It's not quite true that T440 and earlier max out at 8GB RAM - I'm writing this from a T430s w/ 16GB RAM. A T430 can also go to 16GB, and a T440s can go to 12 GB.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#142

Post by gamache »

beryleo wrote: post #141
gamache wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just bought a 2015 Thinkpad T450 from eBay (I do mean "just bought", it hasn't even arrived yet). Beware the T440 and earlier because they max out at 8GB RAM. I got a T450 with an i7 processor and 8GB RAM expandable to 32GB, and it came in under $500 including the fancy Thinkpad dock. In general, nothing runs Linux quite like Last Year's Model.

It's not quite true that T440 and earlier max out at 8GB RAM - I'm writing this from a T430s w/ 16GB RAM. A T430 can also go to 16GB, and a T440s can go to 12 GB.

That doesn't agree with the docs I read. But since I am reading your post, I guess the docs could use an update. :)

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#143

Post by bostand »

eustar wrote: post #109
bostand wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very hard to get hold of one in west for anything close to the original price.

There're two Chinese online shops doing quite sophisticated shipping to EU countries via UK. This seems to be legal and you get it for the Chinese price.

Do you happen to have a link?

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#144

Post by contingencies »

vosper wrote: post #105
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'm currently traveling around the world (8 months, 12 countries so far) carrying a refurb MacBook Air from 2013 (I think). It's great, and I especially like that the all-metal chassis makes it really quite rugged. It fits perfectly down the back of an REI Trail 40 backpack, along with the rest of my stuff (great backpack for traveling light, BTW). If it breaks down there are Apple stores or repair shops in lots of p…

In my experience traveling, about 2013 Macbook Pros got too thin to be described as rugged. I have sporadic hardware issues with mine (late 2013) due to what seems to be physical pressure while in transit.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#145

Post by milankragujevic »

Uberphallus wrote: post #12

Don't go for Cherry Trail devices https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155241 While waiting for that to be fixed I got one for double the price, but 2x-4x the specs.

Agreed. I got myself a Braswell (N3160), 4GB RAM, 32GB eMMC (but it has an unused SATA port and bracket, so I will put in a 240 GB SSD for storage and OS and use the eMMC as a backup solution). It's the Acer ES13. Cost me 24990 RSD, or in USD $215. Pretty nice, typing this on it. Using Ubuntu as the main OS with kernel 4.9.0 (the default Ubuntu 16.10 one cannot return from suspend properly) using Remmina to access a OVH Ubuntu server which runs Windows 10 in VirtualBox. It's a decent and very portable setup, if you have Internet ofcourse. The battery lasts me 5 hours, it's a 3 cell built-in LiPo, but I can't remember the watt-hours rating, however the CPU is only 4 W, and I use the screen at half brightness.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#146

Post by gpascii »

I've owned two Asus Transformers: a T100 and a T200. Both beautiful convertibles, the T100 build quality is imho better having a sturdier keyboard and being more solid overall. Anyway the developing experience on the Intel Atom is far from optimal. I do fullstack web dev and some Java on Android; VMs on BayTrail (either with 2 or 4 gb of ram) are a pain to use, everything is slow and simple tasks become very time consuming. No real multitasking with 4 gb of ram, Chrome will start to kill background tabs as soon as you open Photoshop or similar. That said I've recently bought a refurbished Thinkpad T430 for about $300. Best purchase for my productivity: runs Linux very well, is fast with an i5 and 8gb, is silent, the keyboard is very very good, ssd is fast, build quality is among the best you can find. Try a Thinkpad, you'll love it.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#147

Post by vosper »

contingencies wrote: post #144
vosper wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently traveling around the world (8 months, 12 countries so far) carrying a refurb MacBook Air from 2013 (I think). It's great, and I especially like that the all-metal chassis makes it really quite rugged. It fits perfectly down the back of an REI Trail 40 backpack, along with the rest of my stuff (great backpack for traveling light, BTW). If it breaks down there are Apple stores or repair shops in lots of p…

In my experience traveling, about 2013 Macbook Pros got too thin to be described as rugged. I have sporadic hardware issues with mine (late 2013) due to what seems to be physical pressure while in transit.

It's not rugged in the sense of a ruggedized laptop, but I do think they're tougher than anything else of a similar size.

I've had the odd transient problem with the keyboard (keys swapping or not working) but that's always resolved itself, and actually it hasn't happened for a while. What problems are you having?

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#148

Post by contingencies »

vosper wrote: post #147
contingencies wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience traveling, about 2013 Macbook Pros got too thin to be described as rugged. I have sporadic hardware issues with mine (late 2013) due to what seems to be physical pressure while in transit.

It's not rugged in the sense of a ruggedized laptop, but I do think they're tougher than anything else of a similar size. I've had the odd transient problem with the keyboard (keys swapping or not working) but that's always resolved itself, and actually it hasn't happened for a while. What problems are you having?

Immediate graphical corruption and hard resets based upon minor pressure on certain regions of the touch pad, comes and goes. When it's "on" it's frequent and irritating. Quote to fix is too high.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#149

Post by phaas »

jagtesh wrote: post #7

If 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…

It's worth checking that the laptop actually works as per spec.

I just replaced a Mid-2012 MBP's hard drive cable. It hadn't failed outright, but the system would take a very long time to read/write anything from the drive, constantly freezing apps.

Once I installed a new cable ($12 off amazon), it's speedy again.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?

#150

Post by mindrunner »

jetti wrote: post #48
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.

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.

I have a Chuwi. Honestly, from the get go, you will know that its not a development machine.

As for testing apps, If you wish to simulate the user experience on a cheap Atom, this would be the thing for your. Else, you're bound to be frustrated.

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