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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?

#581

Post by aidenn0 »

Some thoughts:

1. I have heard only good things about Framework. If I were getting a laptop today, that would be on my short-list

2. I have had an HP zBook 15 G3 for many years now, so no issue with durability there. However, I just tried to price one and the price has gone way up, so it's out of the $2k range for anything reasonably configured for developer use.

3. Battery life; if it's going to be mostly plugged in, select the option in the BIOS for that; it will stop charging the battery sooner to increase longevity of the battery. If it's going to be use unplugged a lot, try to keep it above 20%. Ignore any advice about fully draining the battery to prevent "memory effect" that was dubious advice even for NiCd batteries that could potentially suffer from memory effect and was never true for LiIon chemistries.

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

#582

Post by anta40 »

0n34n7 wrote: post #542
rmbyrro wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior? They seem to want to push everyone to use Mac, like religious fanatics try to push everyone to their "truth". I think this is a result of some marketing tactics Apple employed for decades, and it only pushes me away from this brand.

> Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior? Ever think it’s simply because they are amazing machines instead of being some conspiracy or mass brainwashing?

Amazing machines? I haven't tried extensively the M1, so my experience is still limited to the Intel Macs.

They are OK. Not jaw droppingly good, just okay-ish. I work as a mobile app dev and unfortunately you can't avoid Mac for iOS dev :p

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

#583

Post by rootusrootus »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #572
rootusrootus wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior? That is a good question. But ... > They seem to want to push everyone to use Mac, like religious fanatics try to push everyone to their "truth". As soon as you can adequately explain why there are people that are vehemently anti-Apple, you will have the answer to this question. You make it sound like it's only pro-Apple people that are fanatics.

> As soon as you can adequately explain why there are people that are vehemently anti-Apple, you will have the answer to this question. Oh, oh! I know this one. Apple's devices are extremely closed. This is antithetical to the spirit of personal computing. But this is only one component: what ultimately pushes Apple to generate an anti-Apple crowd is the combination of them being a closed platform, them using every d…

> If you're a youngster you're probably happy with occasional hardware replacement and messes of dongles, but for many of us our computing experiences are rooted in opening up the box and switching the guts around, or booting different software on the box, and we don't especially appreciate having to constantly battle the hardware vendor to make this happen.

I'm pushing 50 and 35 years ago I was building PCs (and selling them, too!). I love building PCs. Still do, it's fun. Tinkering is very enjoyable. I technically have more Linux machines than Macs (though admittedly that requires counting Rasberry Pis).

But. For my 'daily driver' computing, I'm pretty happy in the Apple ecosystem. They sell me 'just works' with a polished interface and I can focus my tinkering on the stuff I want to tinker with. And by infecting my extended family with this opinion, I've lowered my technical support load quite a lot.

It's the same reason that years ago I stopped modding my daily driver car, and moved that passion into a hobby instead.

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

#584

Post by tonto »

blenderdt wrote: post #58
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…

I have very mixed feelings about DELL. They have great hardware. But after buying an Ubuntu laptop I discovered it had custom DELL drivers that work fine under Ubuntu 18, but have no support for later versions of Ubuntu. I got everything working again except for the webcam, which kind of sucks.

had a similar experience (not with the webcam specifically but generally with their pre-installed Ubuntu 18). the system they shipped out with pre-installed Ubuntu 18 was really troublesome and would not sleep properly and would go 100% CPU when doing so which was maddening. it was pretty unclear what I did that fixed it because I tried so many things, but, somehow got it fixed and now have a somewhat temperamental but pretty fast laptop 3 years later and am running latest Ubuntu 22.04 beta :)

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

#585

Post by xwdv »

StillBored wrote: post #569
xwdv wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still install more RAM into a T480s as there is an open slot.

Yah, I thought that was clear. But if you get one of the machines with 4G soldered, your basically limited to 1/2 the full capacity of the hardware (36G vs 64G IIRC). edit: Its actually 20-24G max according to the spec sheet, compared with my similar age cheepe dell which does 32G because it has two dimm slots so I have a pair of 16G dimms in it.

Put a 32G dimm on an 8G and you get 40G

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

#586

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

rootusrootus wrote: post #583
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As soon as you can adequately explain why there are people that are vehemently anti-Apple, you will have the answer to this question. Oh, oh! I know this one. Apple's devices are extremely closed. This is antithetical to the spirit of personal computing. But this is only one component: what ultimately pushes Apple to generate an anti-Apple crowd is the combination of them being a closed platform, them using every d…

> If you're a youngster you're probably happy with occasional hardware replacement and messes of dongles, but for many of us our computing experiences are rooted in opening up the box and switching the guts around, or booting different software on the box, and we don't especially appreciate having to constantly battle the hardware vendor to make this happen. I'm pushing 50 and 35 years ago I was building PCs (and sel…

That's fair. Some of us just hold grudges I guess :)

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

#587

Post by rootusrootus »

monkmartinez wrote: post #553
rootusrootus wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior? That is a good question. But ... > They seem to want to push everyone to use Mac, like religious fanatics try to push everyone to their "truth". As soon as you can adequately explain why there are people that are vehemently anti-Apple, you will have the answer to this question. You make it sound like it's only pro-Apple people that are fanatics.

It's hard to see experience on the internet. I agree, it's definitely a two way street with regard to fanaticism. The people that "shout" the loudest often drown out the more reasonable responses. Myself, I have been back and forth between PC (windows) and Apple several times. My priorities have changed over the years and I find PC's fit my requirements to a better extent since 2014. If Apple can bring back a noteboo…

I agree with you, even if I came to a different conclusion on which ecosystem fits my needs better at this moment. I respect that everyone has their own needs, and they will make the best choice for themself. I hate the shouting on the 'net.

I usually stay the heck out of the debate because it devolves to namecalling so quickly, but something about HN makes me want to participate -- the promise of a civil discussion.

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

#588

Post by freeopinion »

swozey wrote: post #356
raxxorraxor wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a Mac Book from time to time and the keyboard alone is special... I don't think Mac is a good universal machine for development to be honest. The devices overall are nice, out of the question, but a Linux machine is ultimately more powerful.

"Ultimately more powerful" As a previous BSD engineer please explain further, this entire thread is just horrendous and should be downvoted to oblivion. Nobody cares what laptop you decide to use, nor are you incapable of doing your own research. My grandmother calls me for laptop recommendations. My M1 Max 14" MBP has 64gb ram, mucho cores and is the fastest machine I've used. My gaming/dev desktop is a 12core ryzen…

If I pay for shipping, would you part with the XPS?

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

#589

Post by Mikeb85 »

aenis wrote: post #556
Mikeb85 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They definitely market the "brand" leading to quasi-religious fervour. Of course, there's religious devotees to all 3. I throw my lot in with the Linux crowd because of freedom: freedom to use the software and not give a fuck about anyone's philosophy or religiousity. And the knowledge that it'll always be open source, I'll always "own" my software, etc...

"I throw my lot in with the Linux crowd because of freedom: freedom to use the software and not give a fuck about anyone's philosophy or religiousity. " I am not sure if you really are expected to give a fck about those things when using any of the major OSes. MacOS does not require you to swear allegiance to the cause of gender equality, even if the company behind it does indeed favour it. Now if you want to partici…

> MacOS does not require you to swear allegiance

No but the company follows a certain direction and you need to buy-in to their idea of the future if you want the seamless experience they promise. For the full Apple "experience" you need multiple Apple devices, an Apple ID, etc...

Windows is slightly more open but similar; you need to buy-in to their ecosystem.

With Linux I can use Gnome, KDE or other... A bunch of distros. A bunch of browsers (without ads, annoyance, etc...). Anything that's an open standard basically works. There is maybe slight buy-in needed to work with my Chromecast (need Chrome on it) but that's an okay compromise.

> Now if you want to participate in developing free software, for good or bad, those things are no longer immaterial, and if you have unpopular ideas about religion or philosophy you will sooner or later be ostracised and some hip code of conduct thingy will be the last thing you will see there.

You can develop free software and ignore those things. Just work on your own thing. But you seem to mean "participate in existing project with existing organization" which is different than your first fragment.

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

#590

Post by jasoneckert »

rmbyrro wrote: post #326
JabavuAdams wrote: post #200

** "I don't want to use a Mac" ** "I've had these problems with Mac" Reasonable response: Cool, use what works for you. EDIT> Here are some suggestions that match your constraints. Annoying response 1: You should reconsider because Mac works great for me. Annoying response 2: Your problems aren't real problems. Annoying response 3: Let's live debug your problems in this thread to see if they're real problems. Guys. I…

Why Mac seems to attract so fanatic behavior? They seem to want to push everyone to use Mac, like religious fanatics try to push everyone to their "truth". I think this is a result of some marketing tactics Apple employed for decades, and it only pushes me away from this brand.

Apple has always perpetuated a Cult of Mac since the Apple II days. I believe this is tactical from a marketing standpoint.

Here is a detailed blog on it: https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/cult-of-mac/

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