I lean toward the 13" Air. My current work laptop is a 15" Macbook Pro, but I have an Air at home. If you don't need the larger screen, which I don't because I plug into at least one extra monitor most of the time, the Air is a nicer package. Less to lug to and from work. The other caveat is that, if you need to run multiple development virtual machines for testing, the 4GB memory max for the Air is somewhat limiting.
Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development?
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Re: Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development?
#12I've been working with a 15" MBP for the past couple of years. I recently swapped out the standard hard drive for a Kingston HyperX SSD (it was about $200 for 120 gigs) and it has literally changed my life. I finally have a responsive computer :) Maybe Kingston SSDs aren't the most performant, but I can't imagine anything better at this point.
> I can't imagine anything better at this point
Swap out your optical drive for a second SSD/a massive HDD. I did that with a OWC DataDoubler and it's a brilliant experience: most apps and OS on SSD load in a blink, while data lives on the HDD to avoid heavy writes knackering the SSD prematurely (because it lacks TRIM)
Re: Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development?
#13Replacing my late 2011 MBP with a system76 lemur. I've been running linux on the MBP for a while and it works well, except for the wireless where only G is supported for now. I'll be receiving the system76 on monday so I can't tell if I like it.
Re: Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development?
#14The 15" Air's will probably be out soon, I'd wait for that.
Re: Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development?
#15Stay away from Crucial SSDs. I've had one for almost two years now — I've had lots of trouble. I just ordered an Intel 520 to replace it. I've heard great things.
probably hit or miss. I also have a crucial ssd (realssd c300), no problems for past 1.5 years.
Re: Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development?
#16sager quad core, 4gig ram, 500 gig hard drive. that was three years ago and my next will be a sager also as the to power/cost ratio is great. with Ubuntu on it things hum beautifully. having the extra cores is great so that I can builds, watchrs, and a movie all running why working.
Re: Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development?
#17I lean toward the 13" Air. My current work laptop is a 15" Macbook Pro, but I have an Air at home. If you don't need the larger screen, which I don't because I plug into at least one extra monitor most of the time, the Air is a nicer package. Less to lug to and from work. The other caveat is that, if you need to run multiple development virtual machines for testing, the 4GB memory max for the Air is somewhat limiting…
I've been considering a 13" Air for a while now - incidentally the one advantage of the 13" Air over the slightly more powerful 13" Pro is the screen resolution: 1440x900 on the Air vs 1280x800 on the Pro. Probably not a huge deal if you plug it in to a monitor a lot but I'd be going for the Air for portability!
Re: Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development?
#18Hm, not a lot of linux laptop love so far so I'll throw my hat in. Last December I bought a ASUS U31 (U31SD-A1 Intel Core i3 2310M 2.10GHz 13.3" 4GB Memory 640GB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M) and I absolutely love it.
The only thing that didn't work with stock ubuntu was the optimus video but with bumblebee it's fine, i only use it to switch off the nvidia anyway since 2d works fine on the intel chip. Also if you give windows a partition it's great for games too.
10 hours of battery life which is probably the most important feature. I never need to worry about bringing a charger when i travel on the weekends. I decided to replace the internal drive with an intel SSD which was spendy, but even after that the price was well below 1k.
Re: Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development?
#19MacBook Air 13". Small, light, cool & silent running with a high resolution and a great keyboard + touchpad. This truly is the best laptop I have ever used.
Thanks to the chipset and SSD it handles everything like a champ. It can even easily run a VirtualBox with win 7 and Visual Studio should you wish to do MS development.
So I would recommend it to every programmer (who needs a laptop).
Comparing SSD's is silly though. It's like comparing supercars. Those small performance differences are irrelevant. Especially when you are used to something very very slow. I would definitely recommend buying something with an SSD for development.
Re: Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development?
#20I lean toward the 13" Air. My current work laptop is a 15" Macbook Pro, but I have an Air at home. If you don't need the larger screen, which I don't because I plug into at least one extra monitor most of the time, the Air is a nicer package. Less to lug to and from work. The other caveat is that, if you need to run multiple development virtual machines for testing, the 4GB memory max for the Air is somewhat limiting…
My current work laptop is a 13" air. For non-compiled development (e.g. JS or other interpreted languages) I find the slower CPU of the Air and limited memory (4GB) plenty sufficient.