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What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

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Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#11

Post by staunch »

DarkShikari wrote: post #3

I find one of the most important things is screen space. And I don't mean a gigantic 17" screen; I mean DPI. I have a 15.4" laptop with a 1680x1050 screen; this gives me room to work. I've seen laptops the same size with 1280x800 screens; I don't know how anyone could do much of anything on those. Don't get anything too heavy. Mine's just over 6 pounds, and that's already pushing it. Finally, don't worry about hard d…

I use a 15.4" Dell Latitude D830 @ 1920x1200 and wouldn't trade it for any other laptop made. I'd say 1920x1200 is about my limit for a 15" LCD, but if anyone makes a 17" laptop that goes higher I'll be first in line. It's amazed me for years how under appreciated the value of high resolution is.

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#12

Post by iigs »

It really comes down to the features you actually need or desire.

Take a hard look at your workflow and usage scenarios:

Do you plan on running a lot of stuff at once? Visual Studio or Eclipse use a lot of resources, you'll probably want to spend a bit on a better CPU and more RAM.

If you don't tax computers very heavily, you might be better served spending on a faster disk and skipping the extra RAM. I had a computer with 1G of RAM that I upgraded to 2G. I actually preferred it with 1G because I rarely use 512MB, and I suspend/resume all of the time. Double the RAM doubled my suspend time, and that's kind of annoying.

Consider your budget. Is this a short term discretionary spend or a long term investment for you? I believe that it's better to buy current generation, mid-high grade parts for some key pieces, electing to forego trendy cutting-edge features, if you're planning on holding on to this for a while. If this is a cheap impulse buy, skip the specs and buy the one with the neat bells and buzzers.

How hard are you on your equipment? If you have peers with laptops, especially some older or more used ones, look at the build quality and the things that are going wrong with them. Some laptop manufacturers (HP/Compaq) do stupid things like making the power cable connector L shaped, which makes the cord into a lever when the cable is kicked. This lever prys on the connector's soldering to the motherboard and trashes the computer. Some manufacturers (Dell) make computers that creak and crack and sag as they age. Some manufacturers (Toshiba) make the laptop lid position switch cheap and unreliable, which makes the LCD flicker when the screen is open. Some manufacturers (IBM / Lenovo) make computers that are tough and reliable but are so ugly you wish they'd die so you can get something else. Some manufacturers (Apple) make computers with such fiddly fit and finish that any service, even by a trained professional, will cause the seams and gaps to not be perfect anymore, which will annoy you because you paid a premium for all of that fit and finish.

For myself I prefer full processors (no Celerons), discrete graphics cards (perhaps passing on the current nVidias that are all failing right now), sufficient (but not more than that) RAM, the fastest hard drives I can afford, and the highest resolution screens available (1900x1200, particularly in a 15", is what I prefer). With this formula you generally have decent parts for things you don't normally upgrade (CPU), and you don't blow your budget on things that can be upgraded later for less (max RAM, larger capacity HD).

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#13

Post by timcederman »

xenoterracide wrote: post #7
yearsinrock wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wat abt celeron m processor can it run visual studio?

if it's 1.5Ghz or more then you'll have no problems. Unless you are doing a lot at once you can probably get away with 1Ghz and maybe less. Ram is killer and remember this is mobile not your primary coding box.

Thanks -- I forgot to mention RAM. I use anything with less than 2gb now, 3gb preferred.

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#15

Post by Paperflyer »

If you work much, you want a high display resolution. However, the laptop still has to be small, so there will be a compromise. Personally, I would go for something like 1280*768 on 13", which is both small and possible to work with.

The other thing you really want is silence. And battery life.

Even if you code a lot, CPU speed is rather irrelevant. Any Core2Duo will do (dual core and 64Bit are great to have). But RAM, you can't have enough -- and since it is cheap at the moment, don't bother and directly upgrade to 4G.

For me, this is a MacBook, but there are plenty of alternatives. For example, the FSC Lifebook series is really great. If possible, look for those business-offerings. They tend to use a little older but more reliable hardware, which can really save your day and will most certainly enable you to run linux.

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#16

Post by anotherjesse »

staunch wrote: post #11
DarkShikari wrote: post #3

I find one of the most important things is screen space. And I don't mean a gigantic 17" screen; I mean DPI. I have a 15.4" laptop with a 1680x1050 screen; this gives me room to work. I've seen laptops the same size with 1280x800 screens; I don't know how anyone could do much of anything on those. Don't get anything too heavy. Mine's just over 6 pounds, and that's already pushing it. Finally, don't worry about hard d…

I use a 15.4" Dell Latitude D830 @ 1920x1200 and wouldn't trade it for any other laptop made. I'd say 1920x1200 is about my limit for a 15" LCD, but if anyone makes a 17" laptop that goes higher I'll be first in line. It's amazed me for years how under appreciated the value of high resolution is.

I had one of those screens, and I thought I would love it, but it ended up causing too much eye strain. Major headaches! Now I prefer small screens with moderate DPI on the go, and using a large external LCD when possible.

Right now I'm using a 37" 1080P LCD as my home monitor and an X60 as my laptop. I use the LCD to keep various communication tools open and the large LCD for coding/reading.

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#17

Post by anotherjesse »

noonespecial wrote: post #9

Long battery life, light weight, and most important: fast wakeup and sleep when I close the lid! This is the most important feature to me. I want to open it up, quick jot something down or check something and then close it again. If it locks up or churns for 10 minutes before I can use it, its a non starter. This has so far kept me on Macs.

"This is the most important feature to me."

I agree with this, with the caveat that actually more important is reliability. Our company bought a few Lenovo T60Ps - with how great the T43P had performed, we thought it would be T43P++. Unfortunately the wireless cards were VERY flaky. :(

So, I want: reliability so I don't have to futz with wireless and other functionality - and then instant on and off. "Elastic laptop"

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#18

Post by CaptainMorgan »

If it were me I wouldn't go with a Celeron; for performance and cache reasons the Pentium M is the wiser decision. Maybe if you're preferring wattage and battery versus overall performance you'd go with Celeron. I run IDE's, profiling and debuggers galore so I need what the Centrino offers.

All great points mentioned here. Lightweight; you can get real light these days without being a DR. I love widescreen ever since I bought my new Thinkpad T61p and the poor displays on the Thinkpads are a thing of the past. I highly disagree that Thinkpads are ugly - they're made for efficiency and professionalism, not for show. Linux; my machine came with SLED of which I partitioned for my love of Ubuntu - gotta have Linux for kernel hacking and that obsessive need for ultimate control of your OS.

All that said, I'm a power user and by that I literally mean I handle my laptop ruggedly(and I'm sincerely not a klutz). For this reason I need a Thinkpad for always on the go and durable performance. They take a beating and their customer service(warranty related) is the best in the business. Had many other brands that crapped out after six to eight months on average - Thinkpads last on average three years before I call in for warranty service(high resale value). My T61p is both lightweight, high performance, widescreen, and allows up to 4 GB of RAM, rugged and goes with me everywhere while taking bumps and bruises along the way. Need a new keyboard because your hackin skillz have worn away the home row, space bar and number row? Call in a service ticket and get a keyboard shipped out and arrived to your door in less than two days(Bigtime priority).

Once you go Thinkpad, you never go back, at least for me anyways.

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#19

Post by smanek »

For me, the killer feature is battery life. I used to have a macbook pro, but I'd get ~3 hours batter life at best (and only 2 hours, when doing heavy work).

I sold it, and bought a thinkpad x60, and get over 6 hours of battery life (4-5 hours under heavy load). I love that I can basically use it all day without worrying about battery.

Pretty much any machine has a fast enough cpu for the kind of work I do - ram seems to be the big bottleneck now. (virtualization + firefox + emacs + python + sbcl + ... all take their toll).

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#20

Post by sl956 »

xenoterracide wrote: post #2

I would get one of the smallest models I could. I'd also make sure it runs linux. use desktops for power that's what they are good at, notebooks should be portable, meaning comfortable to carry around in a bag for a while. Light as you can get. About the only thing I would invest in is at least 1G of ram, maybe even 2G. laptops tend to ship with slower hard drives so if you start swapping you are really going to have…

Light as you can get AND linux friendly: that's exactly what I was looking for. I am now the very happy owner of a sub-2 pounds, Ubuntu certified, 12.1" laptop for 6 month, and that the best notebook choice I ever made. Right choice for me, but I am only on the road 5 to 6 days a month, so your mileage may vary if you are really a nomad worker.
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