You can get any laptop made in the last 15 years, easy. Probably a free one.
Ask HN: What is the cheapest laptop I can buy for development
11–20 of 63 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest laptop I can buy for development
#12I'd go for a second hand latitude.
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest laptop I can buy for development
#13Older Thinkpads, in particular Thinkpad x230 is an overall a good powerful machine selling for around 150$ second hand. It also has good screen and really awesome keyboard.
My T25 died, hinge failure (they're mounted in plastic) so it's back to the X220.
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest laptop I can buy for development
#14[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest laptop I can buy for development
#15The "eBay Deals" page often has discounted refurbished laptops:
https://www.ebay.com/deals/tech/laptops-netbooks
The advantage of buying from the deals page is that eBay has vetted the sellers in advance.
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest laptop I can buy for development
#16HARDWARE SIDE: The cheapest will be to ... not buy laptop. You can go for 2 in 1 and use your Android phone (if you have one) or buy one. Any Android phone will do the job, but best look for one with USB3.1 (these will support display port on phones USB socket) as it carries video signal as well. Here you have phones released in 2021 and 2022 supporting it: https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2021&sFreeTex…
What the heck, why did get -1 ????
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest laptop I can buy for development
#17HARDWARE SIDE: The cheapest will be to ... not buy laptop. You can go for 2 in 1 and use your Android phone (if you have one) or buy one. Any Android phone will do the job, but best look for one with USB3.1 (these will support display port on phones USB socket) as it carries video signal as well. Here you have phones released in 2021 and 2022 supporting it: https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2021&sFreeTex…
> Last piece is IDE
OP mentioned vim; I don't think they're looking for an IDE.
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest laptop I can buy for development
#18HARDWARE SIDE: The cheapest will be to ... not buy laptop. You can go for 2 in 1 and use your Android phone (if you have one) or buy one. Any Android phone will do the job, but best look for one with USB3.1 (these will support display port on phones USB socket) as it carries video signal as well. Here you have phones released in 2021 and 2022 supporting it: https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2021&sFreeTex…
What the heck, why did get -1 ????
Not entirely sure but op wanted advice on a laptop, not a phone
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest laptop I can buy for development
#19Any Windows laptop older than 4 years should be obtainable for a song and work fine.
Re: Ask HN: What is the cheapest laptop I can buy for development
#20Check out the compatibility first, but for quite a long time as a student I was using bargain bin laptops. Usually the components are common/old enough to work out of the box with Linux. If you're happy with performance, it's... ok. The hardware improved enough that as long as it's got 8gb of ram and runs... You should be fine for minimal dev work.
Do a bit of research on whatever you plan to buy though and see if someone has successfully gotten Linux to work on it. There was a recent period of time where the bargain bin laptops had totally bizarre configurations like a 64 bit OS support but 32 bit BIOS, or bleeding edge Intel SOCs with bad Linux support. I think things are better but still can't hurt to double check.