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What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

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Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#21

Post by curiousgeorge »

noonespecial wrote: post #9

Long battery life, light weight, and most important: fast wakeup and sleep when I close the lid! This is the most important feature to me. I want to open it up, quick jot something down or check something and then close it again. If it locks up or churns for 10 minutes before I can use it, its a non starter. This has so far kept me on Macs.

>> Long battery life >> Light weight >> Fast wakeup and sleep

Only thing I'd add is "small". The market may be tilting towards larger computers, but I wouldn't get anything larger than a 13.3 inch computer at this point. 13-inches hits the sweet spot in terms of size and usability. Anything small doesn't feel like a real computer. Anything larger is awkward to use in contained spaces like on airline seats.

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#22

Post by fharper1961 »

anotherjesse wrote: post #16
staunch wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a 15.4" Dell Latitude D830 @ 1920x1200 and wouldn't trade it for any other laptop made. I'd say 1920x1200 is about my limit for a 15" LCD, but if anyone makes a 17" laptop that goes higher I'll be first in line. It's amazed me for years how under appreciated the value of high resolution is.

I had one of those screens, and I thought I would love it, but it ended up causing too much eye strain. Major headaches! Now I prefer small screens with moderate DPI on the go, and using a large external LCD when possible. Right now I'm using a 37" 1080P LCD as my home monitor and an X60 as my laptop. I use the LCD to keep various communication tools open and the large LCD for coding/reading.

I'm using the same laptop + external monitor setup, but I'd actually like to use two external monitors. For me, screen space and RAM are the two important factors.

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#23

Post by sl956 »

CaptainMorgan wrote: post #18

If it were me I wouldn't go with a Celeron; for performance and cache reasons the Pentium M is the wiser decision. Maybe if you're preferring wattage and battery versus overall performance you'd go with Celeron. I run IDE's, profiling and debuggers galore so I need what the Centrino offers. All great points mentioned here. Lightweight; you can get real light these days without being a DR. I love widescreen ever since…

I used to think so... and I was (like you) thinking that my (6.77 pounds) T61 was "lightweight". I finaly replaced it by a Portégé R500 (my first non-Thinkpad laptop in years). Less screen real estate (12"1), obviously not as rugged and sturdy, but I could pack no less than four of those R500 in my bag, and it would still be lighter than my old Thinkpad! Get used to it: Thinkpads (most of them anyway) are really heavy by today standards.

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#24

Post by CaptainMorgan »

sl956 wrote: post #23
CaptainMorgan wrote: post #18

If it were me I wouldn't go with a Celeron; for performance and cache reasons the Pentium M is the wiser decision. Maybe if you're preferring wattage and battery versus overall performance you'd go with Celeron. I run IDE's, profiling and debuggers galore so I need what the Centrino offers. All great points mentioned here. Lightweight; you can get real light these days without being a DR. I love widescreen ever since…

I used to think so... and I was (like you) thinking that my (6.77 pounds) T61 was "lightweight". I finaly replaced it by a Portégé R500 (my first non-Thinkpad laptop in years). Less screen real estate (12"1), obviously not as rugged and sturdy, but I could pack no less than four of those R500 in my bag, and it would still be lighter than my old Thinkpad! Get used to it: Thinkpads (most of them anyway) are really heav…

Your requirements are obviously different than mine. And I'm not sure where you got yours, but my Thinkpad runs at about 5-5.5 lbs... far from close to seven. By your response, it appears you misread my requirements. I agree it's not the lightest, but maybe I should have said it is a dream compared to my previous T43 which feels more like a weighted brick. But emphasis in my post was on ruggedness... which I'll take any day over weight. In that bag of four Portege's or one Protege and whatever else, I'm more concerned with picking up that laptop where I left off - in top condition, which is tough to say when you got a bag stuffed and who knows what could happen to it in transit. Thinkpads have good investment and therefore resale value and I'm not looking for laptops that are fancy on the shell, not coming close to the levels in durability that a Thinkpad does.

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#25

Post by noonespecial »

anotherjesse wrote: post #17
noonespecial wrote: post #9

Long battery life, light weight, and most important: fast wakeup and sleep when I close the lid! This is the most important feature to me. I want to open it up, quick jot something down or check something and then close it again. If it locks up or churns for 10 minutes before I can use it, its a non starter. This has so far kept me on Macs.

"This is the most important feature to me." I agree with this, with the caveat that actually more important is reliability. Our company bought a few Lenovo T60Ps - with how great the T43P had performed, we thought it would be T43P++. Unfortunately the wireless cards were VERY flaky. :( So, I want: reliability so I don't have to futz with wireless and other functionality - and then instant on and off. "Elastic laptop"

Excellent point. Lucky for me, I haven't ended up with a flaky mac yet so its not on my radar, but I'd certainly have to say that ultra reliable networking, keyboard, pointer and USB would be a must.

It doesn't matter how fast your computer wakes up from sleep if it takes 10 minutes of fiddling to get it back on the network.

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#26

Post by iigs »

CaptainMorgan wrote: post #18

If it were me I wouldn't go with a Celeron; for performance and cache reasons the Pentium M is the wiser decision. Maybe if you're preferring wattage and battery versus overall performance you'd go with Celeron. I run IDE's, profiling and debuggers galore so I need what the Centrino offers. All great points mentioned here. Lightweight; you can get real light these days without being a DR. I love widescreen ever since…

Most people I give PC buying advice to really don't think like I do -- either they want a $400 computer, or they want some $2500 thing with some gimmick feature set (custom color lid? who cares? lightscribe blu-ray burner? do that at home! Vista turbo-memory? Why?). For this reason I sometimes over-discount my own opinions about them when I'm advising others.

I personally agree about Thinkpads not being ugly (when I made that comment I was referring to my wife's perception of them initially -- now she's a T61p WUXGA convert as well).

I also agree about Thinkpad reliability, but I know the plural of anecdote isn't data, and everyone's mileage varies.

I disagree about the T series weight. The T grew to fill the void left by the discontinued ~7 pound A series. Yes it's lighter but I feel sorry for any floor it might land on... but the computer will most likely survive.

I fancy myself a power / heavy professional user as well: I have a very low tolerance for hardware related BS. I run minimalist installs of the OS of my choice (XP at the moment). I expect to be able to throw my computer around (while off -- I'm not a sadist) and not scuff or break anything. I disable or order machines without gimmick features (Bluetooth is disabled on my T60p, I got one without the fingerprint reader), and I don't use the full (software-integrated) versions of drivers for anything I don't have to.

With this recipe, my Thinkpads have been very faithful to me over the last ~10 years, and Lenovo's going to have to really screw it up to lose me as a customer.

Depending on what you're looking for I'd say that IBM/Lenovo is ahead of even Apple on build quality. In my opinion Apple pushes too hard on fine design (fine lines and edges, thin case designs) where the Thinkpad team designs their machines to take abuse first and foremost.

If you're the type of person who values these properties I believe a Thinkpad should be on your short list.

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#27

Post by iigs »

noonespecial wrote: post #9

Long battery life, light weight, and most important: fast wakeup and sleep when I close the lid! This is the most important feature to me. I want to open it up, quick jot something down or check something and then close it again. If it locks up or churns for 10 minutes before I can use it, its a non starter. This has so far kept me on Macs.

My preference here is to not have the machine sleep at all when it's closed. I do more sysadmin type work than local development type work, and having TCP (SSH) sessions end every time you close the lid would drive me bananas. I would have ruined several laptops in the last few months as our 90 pound great dane puppy has run at me while I was sitting in my chair hacking away.

MacBooks (and MBPs) don't make this easy, which (unfortunately) has kept me on PCs. I've mitigated the ten minutes of BS thing by keeping my machines clean, with an agressive attitude toward junkware, and setting the power button to suspend the computer to disk.

I've made the "i'm using you" / "i'm done using you, good night" command an explicit step this way, but after adapting it's actually kind of nice (even faster than mac sleep/wake) and lets you keep your music and remote terminals alive, which can be convenient at times.

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#28

Post by Erwin »

iigs wrote: post #27
noonespecial wrote: post #9

Long battery life, light weight, and most important: fast wakeup and sleep when I close the lid! This is the most important feature to me. I want to open it up, quick jot something down or check something and then close it again. If it locks up or churns for 10 minutes before I can use it, its a non starter. This has so far kept me on Macs.

My preference here is to not have the machine sleep at all when it's closed. I do more sysadmin type work than local development type work, and having TCP (SSH) sessions end every time you close the lid would drive me bananas. I would have ruined several laptops in the last few months as our 90 pound great dane puppy has run at me while I was sitting in my chair hacking away. MacBooks (and MBPs) don't make this easy,…

I suspend my desktop nightly (which saves about $100/year).

I have SSH sessions to 6 machines: they just run while:; do ssh -t hostname screen -dR. After a resume, a "killall ssh" kills the broken connections and starts a new one which will bring up exactly the same terminal as before, due to screen.

Depending on how long you suspend for the SSH sessions might still work (assuming you get the same IP address, and there's no NAT with short timeouts, and there's no SSH timeout configured).

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#29

Post by qw »

curiousgeorge wrote: post #21
noonespecial wrote: post #9

Long battery life, light weight, and most important: fast wakeup and sleep when I close the lid! This is the most important feature to me. I want to open it up, quick jot something down or check something and then close it again. If it locks up or churns for 10 minutes before I can use it, its a non starter. This has so far kept me on Macs.

>> Long battery life >> Light weight >> Fast wakeup and sleep Only thing I'd add is "small". The market may be tilting towards larger computers, but I wouldn't get anything larger than a 13.3 inch computer at this point. 13-inches hits the sweet spot in terms of size and usability. Anything small doesn't feel like a real computer. Anything larger is awkward to use in contained spaces like on airline seats.

I agree. I do most of my work with my desktop anyway, so if I'm going to buy a new laptop I will make sure that it is portable

I once bought a 15.4" heavy Dell laptop, but I ended up not using it because I couldn't be bothered to drag it around. Now the laptop is 100% stationary since it given to my mother to browse the web.

Re: What does a Hacker look for in a new laptop

#30

Post by sl956 »

CaptainMorgan wrote: post #24
sl956 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think so... and I was (like you) thinking that my (6.77 pounds) T61 was "lightweight". I finaly replaced it by a Portégé R500 (my first non-Thinkpad laptop in years). Less screen real estate (12"1), obviously not as rugged and sturdy, but I could pack no less than four of those R500 in my bag, and it would still be lighter than my old Thinkpad! Get used to it: Thinkpads (most of them anyway) are really heav…

Your requirements are obviously different than mine. And I'm not sure where you got yours, but my Thinkpad runs at about 5-5.5 lbs... far from close to seven. By your response, it appears you misread my requirements. I agree it's not the lightest, but maybe I should have said it is a dream compared to my previous T43 which feels more like a weighted brick. But emphasis in my post was on ruggedness... which I'll take…

My main point was that the ruggedness and superior build quality of Thinkpads used to have limited drawbacks: they were at worst 10 to 20% heavier than alternatives (and sometimes even lighter, like the 560 around 1995). Not so anymore, especially in the smaller and lighter models: the X200 (and X300) are 120% (and 70%) heavier than a R500. That's why I finally reassessed my longstanding commitments to Thinkpads. But you are right to point that it may be less of an issue for the T series than for the X series: I would probably have stuck to Thinkpads had I been looking for a 15+ inches screen.
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