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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?

#121

Post by adrusi »

lelanthran wrote: post #102
haspok wrote: post #98

> "battery life" vs "Optimized for intensive computing usage" These are contradicting conditions. (Unless maybe on an M1?) If you do use the CPU then battery life will drop even for the best laptops to a few hours max, while the fans will spin like crazy emulating a helicopter taking off. All the above mentioned laptops will behave like that. At my last place I had a Thinkpad P1 which is supposedly for the above ment…

> Battery life tips: 1. get the simplest screen (FHD instead of 4K, 90Hz...). 2. don't get an integrated 3D card. This sounds counter-intuitive. I thought integrated graphics used less power than a discrete amd/nvidia card.

Yes, I can only imagine the parent made a very unfortunate choice of wording, meaning "integrated" as in "integrated into the laptop," and "3d card" as "discrete graphics card." You definitely want A graphics card for battery life (not that you can buy a laptop without one) and you want it to be one integrated into the CPU.

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

#122

Post by lhl »

carlsborg wrote: post #94
fy20 wrote: post #51

A few years ago I would have said ThinkPads but I think there are better options available now. At the end of last year I wanted to replace my T470, and wanted to upgrade to something with a more powerful (not U-series) CPU. The ThinkPad option that fitted my requirements was on back order for months, so I looked around... The ASUS ROG line of gaming laptops had exactly what I wanted, although they look a bit garish,…

Second this. I run an Arch derived distro on my ASUS AMD Zen3 5900 with 8 cores/16 hw threads and the cpu benchmarks are close to the M1 macs for about half the price. The Realtek WiFi device is a problem with hp laptops too. Works but needs a cold reboot after the hibernate wakes up. Are you saying the intel WiFi chip is pin compatible with the Realtek? That’s an amazing find.

Unless the antennas are glued (annoying but can be worked around with a heatgun), your BIOS device locks your wifi card (like Lenovo did with some of their laptops), or you accidentally get a CRF module that can only be used in compatible Intel devices, most laptops use a standard sized M.2 E key or miniPCIe network card that are totally interchangeable. Intel AX200/AX210s are dirt cheap (like $10-20) and done immediate replacements in my past 3 laptops.

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

#125

Post by usr1106 »

ta4948474637272 wrote: post #66
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…

How are the keyboards on recent X1 Carbons and X1 Nanos? I have a 6th gen X1 Carbon (bought 2017) and I am in love with it. It just survived nasty a 4ft drop with only cosmetic damage. However, I've heard that the keyboards on the recent models are not as good. It's the only thing stopping me from getting a Nano... Edit: Linux support is stellar on the X1 Carbon, which is no surprise since RedHat issues its employees…

I had a X1C bought early 2018. Not sure about the generation from the top of my head, but it had no hpdi screen. Battery life was great and Linux worked fine.

In early 2020 it got stolen (full disk encryption with a strong passphrase luckily). I got a X1C 7th and expected it would be as good as the previous one. The first bad surpirse was the HiDPI screen. Xubuntu did not work well with it, it required a lot of fiddling. Well and then I run some non-Xubuntu app here and there and it required extra fiddling. In the end I gave up and just reduced the screen resolution to some "classical" value and everything was fine again. Have not noticed that my code is worse because of slightly less smooth fonts... (Some distros might be easier in that aspect, Wayland is reportedly better, and to my suprise even i3 seems to work rather well.)

Even worse the battery life is significantly worse than on the previous model. To my understanding higher resolution displays require more energy, there is nothing you can do. Have not checked whether the newer CPU could also have an impact. A full working day on battery is hardly possible anymore, even with little playing of videos or similar.

Finally my current X1C 7th came with a 4G modem that has no Linux driver at all. Not a big deal for me because I have only 1 SIM anyway and my phone has good data rates to share.

More on the anecdotal side: A firmware update was broken recently. I guess bugs happen everwhere. What I liked that Lenovo guys where active on github and a fix came quickly. Couldn't resist thinking: Like in the IBM days when Thinkpads got good support.

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

#126

Post by noisem4ker »

microtonal wrote: post #40
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 res…

Past, informative discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28639952&p=2

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

#128

Post by zamalek »

Just some general advice:

> https://kfocus.org/order/order-m2.html

NVIDIA gets really old, really fast. My personal laptop has an NVIDIA GPU and AMD iGPU, my desktop is AMD.

For my laptop, a zen2 build of the kernel nets me about 15% more battery life and a snappier system. Unfortunately NVIDIA makes installing that kernel tedious, so I just run the regular kernel. I also have to install the proprietary drivers because noveau keeps crashing (across multiple distros).

n=1 and everything, but I'd strongly recommend avoiding NVIDIA and going with either an Intel iGPU or AMD iGPU/dGPU.

Unless you want to do some ML, in which case NVIDIA is a must.

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

#129

Post by boppo1 »

samsk wrote: post #114
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…

Cant agree more. I've stopped buying new laptops and now I use refurbished Thinkpad P50 with i7, 64GB RAM, 512 SSD for ~1100 USD. If I need to do something really computing intensive, I rent a cloud VM ;-) Actually, I've one for each project I'm working on, and I scale them as/if needed.

Who do you use for the cloud VM? I'm in the market
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