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Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

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Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#71

Post by lloeki »

sophacles wrote: post #17
ntkachov wrote: post #6

How about a laptop with a better key board, slim figure, larger special character keys and more feedback for keys? Then shove a great processor, a mouse pad that's not accidentally click able while typing, and a high resolution screen. That's a developer laptop. Ill install my own software, Thank you very much.

On top of that, I will never consider switching away from my Macbook until the following things are true: * battery will last several hours (macbook still at 4+ hrs on full charge and it is 1.5 yrs old) * very good (open) acpi support - if I can't 100% trust closing and opening to just suspend and resume correctly, I won't use it for anything other than toy purposes. (and open because I will be using my own kernel, o…

> (macbook still at 4+ hrs on full charge and it is 1.5 yrs old)

My MacBook Pro, mid-2009, original battery:

    Temperature = 2982
    CycleCount = 591
    DesignCycleCount9C = 1000
    DesignCapacity = 5450
    MaxCapacity = 4814
    WearRatio = 88%
    CurrentCapacity = 1514
    ChargeRatio = 31%
    Voltage = 11077
    Amperage = -694
    InstantAmperage = -661
    InstantTimeToEmpty = 2:17
    TimeRemaining = 2:11
    AvgTimeToEmpty = 2:11
    FullToEmptyTime = 6:56
(this is from a python script of mine [0])

Close to three years of daily, heavy use. The thing just doesn't want to die (crossing fingers).

[0] https://gist.github.com/2630561

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#72

Post by huggyface »

oemera wrote: post #66
huggyface wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell servers are excellent . They are beautifully engineered, sacrifice nothing, and are extremely well supported. Such "Dell sucks" anecdotes are generally of the "my company bought 400 of the cheapest desktops that Dell manufacturers, of which a couple presented troubles. Therefore Dell sucks." variety.

I own nothing from Dell beside my 23" Ultra Sharp monitor and I will tell you that I will never ever buy anything from Dell again. The monitor is really awesome at its price point and I don't want to miss it but the service Dell is doing is the worst I have ever seen. Let me tell you why. When I bought the monitor I was really happy to get a 3 year ultra warranty service from Dell for free. So the monitor gets shippe…

I hardly want to defend Dell support (knock on wood but I've never, ever had to directly deal with them), however what you experienced is hardly unique -- they see a usage outside of the norm and assume the usage is to blame. Honestly if I were you I would have said "Oh yeah, plugged it into my `normal' PC and it still looks terrible" and they would have replaced it. Unfortunate that it demands a lie or two, but such is the nature of tech support.

And I would hardly give Apple a free pass. They are the ones who are quite eager to blame any issue on a water sensor that is well known to indicate false positives.

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#73

Post by Danieru »

kamechan wrote: post #63
sophacles wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of that, I will never consider switching away from my Macbook until the following things are true: * battery will last several hours (macbook still at 4+ hrs on full charge and it is 1.5 yrs old) * very good (open) acpi support - if I can't 100% trust closing and opening to just suspend and resume correctly, I won't use it for anything other than toy purposes. (and open because I will be using my own kernel, o…

Thinkpad already has both problems solved. Getting 12-14 hours on my thinkpad T420 with a 9 cell and a power script written to make all the items found "bad" by powertop2 turn to "good". Switched from x220 (which was getting roughly the same battery life) because its 1366x768 screen wasn't quite enough for on-the-go work. As for the lid opening and closing doing what it's supposed to, it does. Coincidentally, the ACP…

Do you have any more details on how to create such a script?

I have a T510 and despite the 80 watt hour battery I get only <4 hours of runtime.

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#74

Post by phaus »

oemera wrote: post #66
huggyface wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell servers are excellent . They are beautifully engineered, sacrifice nothing, and are extremely well supported. Such "Dell sucks" anecdotes are generally of the "my company bought 400 of the cheapest desktops that Dell manufacturers, of which a couple presented troubles. Therefore Dell sucks." variety.

I own nothing from Dell beside my 23" Ultra Sharp monitor and I will tell you that I will never ever buy anything from Dell again. The monitor is really awesome at its price point and I don't want to miss it but the service Dell is doing is the worst I have ever seen. Let me tell you why. When I bought the monitor I was really happy to get a 3 year ultra warranty service from Dell for free. So the monitor gets shippe…

Even if Dell's monitors had a 50 percent failure rate and no warranty, you would still be saving money by purchasing only Dell monitors. While price isn't likely your only concern, $1000 for a monitor(even a nice one) is really ridiculous. When you consider the fact that a 27" iMac only costs about $1700, it only seems even more absurd.

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#75

Post by kamechan »

Danieru wrote: post #73
kamechan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinkpad already has both problems solved. Getting 12-14 hours on my thinkpad T420 with a 9 cell and a power script written to make all the items found "bad" by powertop2 turn to "good". Switched from x220 (which was getting roughly the same battery life) because its 1366x768 screen wasn't quite enough for on-the-go work. As for the lid opening and closing doing what it's supposed to, it does. Coincidentally, the ACP…

Do you have any more details on how to create such a script? I have a T510 and despite the 80 watt hour battery I get only <4 hours of runtime.

edited my initial comment to include the information. HTH.

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#76

Post by joe_the_user »

ntkachov wrote: post #6

How about a laptop with a better key board, slim figure, larger special character keys and more feedback for keys? Then shove a great processor, a mouse pad that's not accidentally click able while typing, and a high resolution screen. That's a developer laptop. Ill install my own software, Thank you very much.

A Linux laptop should be a good laptop. But we should be aware that having Linux pre-installed does make a difference.

A) You'll either pay the Microsoft tax or have Linux pre-installed, possibly both depending how how deep MS' hooks are.

B) Having all the drivers work is important, especially modern laptops will often switch their peripheral chips without changing even model # so there.

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#77

Post by jf781 »

Big time developers have always said that OS X is a better Unix development environment than Linux. Dell is smart to come out with a power Linux development station. My friends have been replacing their unix workstations with Macintoshes. Mac OS X is basically plain Unix -BSD flavor. Now Dell is going there. Smart by Dell

@furrier

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#78

Post by Kuiper »

pkmays wrote: post #15

I'm surprised they think developers would be interested in this. Having worked with Dell in IT, you couldn't pay me to use anything they put their name on. Dell have a bad reputation in both hardware and peopleware, and it's well deserved.

I worked in a university's IT department for most of my undergraduate career and have nothing but good things to report about their business class laptops. Their low-end consumer grade laptops are, well, low-end. Most of the tales of disappointment I've heard from Dell are people who decided to scrape the bottom of the bargain bin and were disappointed when they got what they paid for.

Re: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers

#79

Post by ramLlama »

blhack wrote: post #70
amackera wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've owned 3 Dell laptops in the past 2 years. First one's screen broke. Second one's graphics card was faulty. Third one's sound was messed up, sent the PC in for repairs. Dell technicians dropped it on the ground, blamed me for doing it, then refused to further support it. I don't care one way or the other if anyone else buys Dell; but there's no chance in hell that I will ever again.

Okay, anecdotes with anecdotes. The dell laptops that I've had (from the latitude series. That ugly gray one) have been sturdier than most bricks. I've dropped them on my wood floor, they've been tossed around in my backpack, had things spilled on them, and been abused in every way you can imagine. They still keep chugging. *When I'm talking about multiple laptops, I'm talking about multiple laptops within my company…

I think this is because you are comparing the business laptop to the consumer edition. While I haven't actively shopped laptops for a few years, I have noticed that the business editions, while a tad more expensive and less "stylish", are usually much better built. My friends' consumer Dell laptops consistently fail within the first 1.5 years or so. My father's 6 year old Dell survived much abuse, and is doing fine.

The business versions of laptops are usually far better built, but you cannot buy them at Best Buy and the like.

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