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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?

#331

Post by martibravo »

tasuki wrote: post #290
tacker2000 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks good but the deal breaker here is the screen. 1920x1080 is just not enough these days.

That's just your opinion... I have good eyesight, yet prefer 1920x1080 in my laptops: - Larger resolutions are a significant battery drain. - Larger resolutions are more GPU intensive, taking away precious system resources.

Also, the fact that this is a 15.6-inch display enables me to set zoom on VS Code and Firefox to 90%, still able to read everything but with more estate. I had an MBP Retina before and for the life of me I don't miss the extra pixels. I do miss the 16:10 aspect ratio, though.

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

#332

Post by mentos »

noduerme wrote: post #192

This is probably an unpopular view, but I kind of use laptops as if they were terminals. If you want to spend $2k, I'd invest $1600 of that in a great desktop machine, and spend the other $400 on a cheap chromebook and tablets / keyboards / gizmos to log into it remotely.

I went to BestBuy last month with this same idea in mind. I've got 4 desktop PCs under my desk I use for game dev but I'm curious to travel and remote desktop into them. I was on the fence about maybe just getting a small laptop and large portable monitor but eventually landed on a $329 "HP - 17.3" Laptop - Intel Core i3 - 8GB Memory - 256GB SSD - Natural Silver" that seemed to check my two boxes cheap & large screen.

I haven't made the purchase yet because I'm concerned if I should reach for a more expensive laptop that I can do work on in case I'm ever unable to connect over RDP.

Curious to hear if anyone else has had any success with this kind of setup?

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

#333

Post by OJFord »

resonious wrote: post #143
OJFord wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mention it because I don't think it's a Framework issue (GP obviously doesn't have it) but rather my somehow messed up configuration of it, but the one problem I have with mine at the moment is that ten seconds or so after resuming (but not before) everything starts segfaulting, literally any command. And consequently logs don't get written to disk, so there's no record of it after I reboot it (with the phys…

Oh wow. Indeed I haven't experienced this. How's the battery drain while suspended? I can't help but wonder if you get better suspend in exchange for...everything segfaulting.

I haven't noticed that it's been bad, but then I've had more to worry about... I have the same CPU (and, I thought the same config...) on my work laptop and no problem with battery drain there; I use 'hybrid-sleep' (suspend to swap & RAM, resume from the latter if possible but tolerate power loss).

It sounds like you might be using 'shallow' or 's2idle' (suspend to idle) sleep mode? You might need to write 'deep' to /sys/power/mem_sleep. (But don't listen to me, mine segfaults!)

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

#334

Post by jhoward321 »

Avalaxy wrote: post #152
sirwitti wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used 2 XPS13 (9343 and 9370) as my daily driver for years, this is simply not true in my experience. On my 9343 bluetooth did not work initially, and on the 9370 the fingerprint reader is not available (no driver available), but apart from that linux is just working - and I'm not particular fond of spending time on setting things up. Much more of an issue is that the xps, as every non apple computer does not s…

> Having used 2 XPS13 (9343 and 9370) as my daily driver for years, this is simply not true in my experience. That's good to hear for you, but I'm not just making this up. I have the XPS 13 9310 which mostly comes with the AX500 chip for wifi and bluetooth. - For about half a year it had NO support in Ubuntu (non-existent drivers) - Then it finally got drivers, but it was extremely unstable. After an automatic update…

I mean that sounds like problems with one wifi card which can be swapped out for about $30. Swap it out for something like the ax200 and I bet those problems go away

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

#335

Post by kawsper »

mcv wrote: post #274
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,…

If you're going for a Thinkpad, the T480 from a couple of years ago seems to be the gold standard. The current successor of that model is the T14, but I have no idea if it's as good. I got an X1 Extreme, which is a gorgeous machine, and very powerful, but it eats through its power like no laptop I've seen before. Battery charge rarely lasts more than 2 hours. One big advantage of the high-end Thinkpads: they're spill…

The T480s is also worth considering.

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

#336

Post by icharters »

horsawlarway wrote: post #279
usr1106 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elsewhere in the comments there is a message saying that containers are constant headache under MacOS. Not having used it I can't comment. But containers are a regular part of my work. We have them in production and additionally I use them because I cannot install every required tool / environment to my machine at the same time. In that light the position of the best tool for the job doesn't sound to be undisputed.

icharters is a victim of apple's marketing. Apple makes decent laptops, and the new m1 machines are not a bad pick. They are absolutely not the best tool for the job unless that job is developing iOS apps.

No post body was provided.

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

#337

Post by rileyphone »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #246
cruano wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should have put that on the title I mean, it's already kind of stupid to want to avoid something the whole industry uses, from big tech to startups. In particular, when you have a very hard set of requirements that historically no one gets right except for you know who.

> I mean, it's already kind of stupid to want to avoid something the whole industry uses, from big tech to startups Windows still owns the market to a substantial degree, Macos is still a niche OS. Maybe you've seen a trend of software companies moving to Macos, but it's definitely not the standard by any means.

That's not entirely true these days, Mac market share has gone up from 5% to ~15% in the last 10 years while Windows sits on its hands.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...

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

#338

Post by flashfaffe2 »

Have you checked frame.work?

They offer fully customisable laptop where each pieces can be replace.

Ps: I've just bought mine and tested it for few days so should take my view with a pinch of salt but so far the laptop is inline with my expectations.

You can check some reviews on YouTube as well.

https://youtu.be/jmgBwMHpP1w

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

#339

Post by ajennings »

I bought a Librem 15 before the 14 existed. I was very happy with it (including battery life/suspend) for about a year and used it with Linux as my daily driver. Then hardware started to fail and now it freezes randomly. (I've replaced the memory. Must be the mainboard?)

Maybe I was unlucky. Also, the 14 may be more reliable.

After that, I almost bought a Librem 14, but I took a chance on the Framework. The only real problem is battery life/suspend, but it's annoying enough that I can't bring myself to use it as a daily driver.

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

#340

Post by dirwiz »

I imagine everyone's answer will begin with "It depends". I can only give you feedback on my workflow & setup.

My dev hardware is an external SSD (USB3) running Debian. I virtualized my dev environment using qemu/kvm.

I have several old laptops with no hard drives stationed at various offices. I just plug in, boot from the SSD and off to the races.

If I need a laptop while traveling, I just pull from the old laptops pile and remove it's hard drive. Good to go.

I do have minimum specs for the hardware: 1TB Samsung SSD (be sure the cable supports TRIM!) 16GB Memory (Virtualization) nVidia graphics (hard to find those non-hybrid types) decent screen size.

In addition to normal backups of the host & VM, I do a weekly image of the VM. This helps greatly against damage/loss of the SSD.

Hope this helps

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