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Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

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Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#31

Post by cookiengineer »

I got myself a T440p because the 4th generation is the last one with replaceable display, battery, RAM and CPU.

They're quite heavy but that's not an issue for me. Best bang for the buck I ever spent.

Bought it around 2015 in used condition for around 250EUR, then upgraded CPU, RAM, batteries (2x as of now), got a bigger SSD and HDD (512GB+4TB) and got an IPS display and a touchpad of the T480 which fits in there.

I just love that laptop. Superb linux support once you figured out how to setup the synaptics driver configs with synclient.

Oh and it's also the last generation (afaik) that can run coreboot as a BIOS.

Overall I probably spent around 800EUR on it, but considering its lifetime (sold in 2013-today) I say it's definitely worth it. So many "Ultrabooks" and Macbook Pros died on me before, because I always overstressed their GPUs.

There's a German Thinkpad wiki that contains all kinds of quirks and potential problems you can get, it's an amazing resource.

The tldr is you should update the BIOS first and update the firmware of your dockingstation with windows running, and then install linux to be safe. [1]

[1] https://thinkwiki.de/ThinkPad-Modelle

edit: Oh and I used an external m.2 adapter to PCI-e occasionally when I have to do ML related work when I'm not at home on my tower. It kinda works but performance is limited to somewhat PCI-e 4x speed even when it says 8x mode is being used.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#32

Post by horsestaple »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #6

Second hand ThinkPad T series gets a lot of bang for the buck (maybe not as good as they used to be, but still good, repairable, generally upgradable and very available as ex-enterprise machines). Good matte displays, good hinges and great keyboards. Don't sweat the battery, they're removable, upgradeable to larger ones if you have to go a longer time on a charge and easy to replace. For the change left over from $20…

Yeah I don't think you need to spend so much when these second hand T-series get you 95% of the way there for less.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#34

Post by Avalaxy »

daenney wrote: post #18

The problem I run into with a lot of these is that their screens aren’t great. 1080p@60Hz and usually pretty terrible brightness makes them a bad fit for me as a travel companion, or even just working from my garden. It’s also annoying that some keep insisting on a barrel connector for charging instead of leveraging the USB-C port. As much as I appreciate the privacy and freedom enhancing aspects of some of these dev…

> Dell XPSes are good too

Be very careful. They are very good laptops, and Dell's customer support for businesses is stellar, but the XPS machines play VERY bad with Linux. There are some XPS machines that are shipped with linux, so they should be fine. But most of them have wifi/bluetooth chips that have no support at all, or very bad support.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#35

Post by rbanffy »

yellow_lead wrote: post #33
rbanffy wrote: post #29

Have you thought about a 16G M1 Mac? They are in that range and are incredibly well built. And MacOS is a fine BSD.

> I have no intention of using Windows/MacOS

Got to that part after posting this. I too like Gnome better, but I don’t like it better enough not to be tempted.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#36

Post by jack_pp »

excitednumber wrote: post #19
francis-io wrote: post #4

The professional (T series) line of the Thinkpads are my go to. I've been running ubuntu 20.04 for the past few years. You can have hot swap batteries and an inbuilt SIM slot if you choose. Not sure if the fingerprint is working (I didn't select that option) but everything else works flawlessly. Side note: I have been maintaining an Ansible playbook for years now that sets up my developer workstation. I do know Ansib…

I recently wimped out of buying a thinkpad due to uncertainty regarding getting Ubuntu running correctly and the time it would take me to do it. Do you have a guide you’ve used or instructions you have stashed somewhere?

I'm running Debian on a t490 and have had no issues so far. I can find a replacement t490 for under 600$ and it's a great dev machine.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#37

Post by jrib »

jll29 wrote: post #24

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 or X1 Nano are my favorites. Small, light, but powerful. Before I used the ThinkPad X230 and DELL Latitude 7270, each for many years and bought second hand. The DELL was particularly sturdy. All of these are Ubuntu LTS friendly boxes. Avoid Microsoft Surface Laptops, which require patches to run Linux, Microsoft doesn't offer an Image ready to burn on a stick. And although I'm writing this on an M1…

What do you find lacking in the m1 to make it your dev machine?

The battery on the m1 was to enticing. I went back and forth between a ThinkPad x1 with Linux and this MacBook air. It's impressive and I have no regrets. When there's an arm laptop released with similar performance and battery life I can run Linux on, I'll definitely be picking one up

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#39

Post by daenney »

Avalaxy wrote: post #34
daenney wrote: post #18

The problem I run into with a lot of these is that their screens aren’t great. 1080p@60Hz and usually pretty terrible brightness makes them a bad fit for me as a travel companion, or even just working from my garden. It’s also annoying that some keep insisting on a barrel connector for charging instead of leveraging the USB-C port. As much as I appreciate the privacy and freedom enhancing aspects of some of these dev…

> Dell XPSes are good too Be very careful. They are very good laptops, and Dell's customer support for businesses is stellar, but the XPS machines play VERY bad with Linux. There are some XPS machines that are shipped with linux, so they should be fine. But most of them have wifi/bluetooth chips that have no support at all, or very bad support.

I’ve owned two generations of them and exclusively run Linux on them (I think the 2016 and 2018 releases). One of them was a Developer Edition from work, but the other one was a generic store bought. Never had any issues with WiFi or Bluetooth.

I’ve always run distributions with kernel releases that aren’t months or years behind upstream, which might have helped as far as hardware support goes.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#40

Post by microtonal »

daenney wrote: post #18

The problem I run into with a lot of these is that their screens aren’t great. 1080p@60Hz and usually pretty terrible brightness makes them a bad fit for me as a travel companion, or even just working from my garden. It’s also annoying that some keep insisting on a barrel connector for charging instead of leveraging the USB-C port. As much as I appreciate the privacy and freedom enhancing aspects of some of these dev…

Dell XPSes are good too

Unless you plan to put them into a bag or backpack suspended:

With regards to transporting your laptop in a bag or backpack, safety should be your primary concern. You should always turn the laptop OFF [...] Under no circumstances should you leave a laptop powered on and in any sleep/hibernate/standby mode when placed in a bag, backpack, or in an overhead bin. The laptop will overheat as a result of that action.

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/FAQ-Modern-Standby/td-p/7...

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