http://www.lappylist.com/ is a fantastic, comprehensive comparison for a range of laptops. It also dispels a lot of the myths I had about laptops, what is important in them, etc.
I can't recommend it enough.
Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
121–130 of 165 posts
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#122Doesn't fold out as a tablet, but my dell XPS 13 is epic. I did swap out the WiFi card, but only because I run Linux, and the broadcom one had crappy driver support.
The XPS 13 made me smile again while developing. Running Ubuntu.
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#123Program what? 4 GB is a little low these days, unless you're an Unix text editor and makefile person.
Also, the rigidity of the keyboard and connection to it will be super important. Most detachable keyboards will cause trouble (especially the cheap ones.)
I'd recommend going for more ram, as big a screen as you can stand, and solid keyboard.
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#124http://www.lappylist.com/ is a fantastic, comprehensive comparison for a range of laptops. It also dispels a lot of the myths I had about laptops, what is important in them, etc. I can't recommend it enough.
Thanks for link. It looks very useful.
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#125> decent 4 core Cherry Trail Z8300 CPU None of the Atom chips is decent for anything that requires heavy lifting. You really need a Core processor. > 4Gb of RAM, 64 Gb of ROM 4GB is workable but 8GB is obviously better. However, I think you mean 64GB of storage. This is usually in the form of an eMMC chip soldered to the motherboard. The performance is similar to an ordinary SD card. It's nowhere near the performance…
> This is usually in the form of an eMMC chip soldered to the motherboard.
This is something to watch out for, but hasn't been done commonly for years. Those are the most likely parts to fail and manufacturers hate replacing an entire mobo under warranty just to replace a flash chip.
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#126"for programming" ...
I programmed just fine on a single core idk-what older celeron with 512MB of RAM and a.. idk ~1000x700 resolution (and even all that was waaaay too much). Next time say what you want to program, as for web and such programming you need a ton of RAM (and probably cpu) while some things/languages you can program just fine with 256MB and a weak cpu.
Bdw cherry trail has a sound card in the cpu that doesn't yet work under linux.
edit: ".. IntelliJ IDEA?" Requirements are clear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IntelliJ_IDEA . And you can just open your task manager and see how much memory or cpu it uses.
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#127If it's for a trip mad you don't need it afterwards, you might think about a refurbished MacBook. The initial outlay will be more, but the resale value is good. I know people who've done this and actually came out a little ahead.
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#128Considering your goals and price range. I'd recommend shopping the refurb market. Specifically business laptops that are off lease. Bigcorp IT departments tend to cycle their hardware every 3-4 years and flood the market with used cheap/good used laptops. They won't be 'ultrabooks' but they will be cheap, reliable and easy to maintain. Something like a Dell E6430 would be a good bet. https://www.dellrefurbished.com/l…
Yes ! These Dells are amazing
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is it all Intel? That's excellent! Yes. > Tricky question, do you get battery discharge events via ACPI (run acpid, and unplug)? I got this: $ acpi // plugged in Battery 0: Unknown, 100% $ acpi // unplugged Battery 0: Discharging, 99%, 83:38:49 remaining > What material are keycaps made of? Plastic. Edit: Just saw that you meant acpid. With acpid nothing happened: $ acpi $ acpi -f // to run in foreground $ Is this…
Thanks for checking this. Very few laptops support this, and its badly documented. But it's IMHO the difference between good and superb Linux support. Run sudo acpid, will start the daemon in the background. Then run acpi_listen. It will block waiting for events. E.g. if you press media keys, un/plug the adapter, etc you should start seeing events. One per line. Just leave it running on battery for a while. Hopefully…
Ok, thanks for the instructions! It seems to work, this time I did 'sudo acpid' and 'acpi_listen' gave me following output (scroll the code field below to the right in case my comments there are hidden):
// Notebook was at the beginning unplugged
$ acpi_listen
^[[14~^[[15~^[[20~ac_adapter ACPI0003:00 00000000 00000001 // I pressed three media keys and plugged in the power adapter
battery PNP0C0A:00 00000080 00000001
battery PNP0C0A:00 00000081 00000001
processor LNXCPU:00 00000080 00000005
processor LNXCPU:01 00000080 00000005
processor LNXCPU:02 00000080 00000005
processor LNXCPU:03 00000080 00000005
processor LNXCPU:00 00000081 00000000
processor LNXCPU:01 00000081 00000000
processor LNXCPU:02 00000081 00000000
processor LNXCPU:03 00000081 00000000
ac_adapter ACPI0003:00 00000000 00000000 // unplugged the power adapter again
battery PNP0C0A:00 00000080 00000001
battery PNP0C0A:00 00000081 00000001
processor LNXCPU:00 00000081 00000000
processor LNXCPU:01 00000081 00000000
processor LNXCPU:02 00000081 00000000
processor LNXCPU:03 00000081 00000000
^C
But it seems that the system emits charge and discharge acpi events.
Re: Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming?
#130Considering your goals and price range. I'd recommend shopping the refurb market. Specifically business laptops that are off lease. Bigcorp IT departments tend to cycle their hardware every 3-4 years and flood the market with used cheap/good used laptops. They won't be 'ultrabooks' but they will be cheap, reliable and easy to maintain. Something like a Dell E6430 would be a good bet. https://www.dellrefurbished.com/l…
I second this opinion. There are for example lots of people who are happy with older Lenovo models. Performance wise you don't need to loose that much, since the Intel CPUs are not getting that much faster. Pick up some good model (for example on Lenovo side look at X2x0 or the T4x0 (where x=2,3,4,5,6) models) and swap HDD with some reasonably priced SSD and put in max memory.
I just bought a 2015 Thinkpad T450 from eBay (I do mean "just bought", it hasn't even arrived yet). Beware the T440 and earlier because they max out at 8GB RAM. I got a T450 with an i7 processor and 8GB RAM expandable to 32GB, and it came in under $500 including the fancy Thinkpad dock.
In general, nothing runs Linux quite like Last Year's Model.