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Ask HN: Best robust laptop for everyday software development

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Re: Ask HN: Best robust laptop for everyday software development

#31

As much as I like to bang on Apple for various and sundry reasons I go back to Apple every time because I can walk into any apple store in the world and I can get the thing serviced on the spot, often for free, but as a dev, time is money and I need something sorted right away. This is what you're paying extra for when you buy a mac. Make no mistake.

Unless you buy a new MBP and your keyboard randomly goes out. I'm currently enjoying the 2-3 week turnaround on that.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Best robust laptop for everyday software development

#32
Dell Precisions have always been pretty durable. The newer ones have gotten much thinner and lighter, and I've not used them, but you can often find refurbished sub $500 m4800s that can still support 32GB of ram, multiple sata drives, discrete graphics, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Best robust laptop for everyday software development

#33
post #2

In the future, you will go out with your keyboard instead of a laptop.

In the future, you will go out with a headset and a pair of gloves instead of your keyboard.

The future, as seen from early 1990s; banging your fingers into the table is somewhat underwhelming compared to the response of a keyboard. If the gloves could fix that with tactile feedback...

Re: Ask HN: Best robust laptop for everyday software development

#35
A 2013-2015 Mac Book Pro 15" with the old style keys if you can find one. I know a lot of orgs and devs are snatching them up these days. Mines been going strong for years. My wife bought the current gen MBP and its been in for repairs twice already over that damn keyboard.

I also have a T410 Thinkpad running linux and while the screen sucks, its a tank and still runs great. Super repairable too.

Gonna sound like an old guy here but they truly don't make em like they used to. If you are looking for true durability, might be that getting something a few years old is just the ticket.

Re: Ask HN: Best robust laptop for everyday software development

#40
If you like the MBP but want to use GNU/Linux, you don’t need to install it on the MBP’s bare metal. You can use it in a virtual machine. I use my home desktop as a gaming machine (running Windows) and as a coding machine running FreeBSD in a VM and it works great.

You probably don’t even need to set up X-Windows on the GNU/Linux guest. You can just run it headless and ssh in from a terminal on the macOS host.

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