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Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?
371–380 of 538 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
My last Dell XPS sucked and the support sucked. I bought a top of the line XPS and within less than a year the battery was swollen. Same exact battery model they were still replacing for free on the previous laptop model, but when I called support I was out of luck. So I bought a new battery. And then within a few more months I started getting common the sticky key problem with several keys on my keyboard requiring a…
Was your last Dell recent? I remember having horrible experiences with Dell support so I wouldn't buy them. But about 1.5 years ago I saw a great deal on a refurbished beefy machine I needed - and found their support was amazing when it needed some parts replaced. My guess is they did a 180 on support because they had a bad reputation. YMMV because I still hear bad experiences - they partner with local support so it…
Dell has no proven track of good support. You may say it’s an entirely different company since [too short to measure accurately] and you would just look like the rest of their campaign managers.
If they truely have changed, they would have made a fuss about it, wouldn’t have they.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
The M1/M2 Macbooks are a total game-changer. You made your switch in the Intel era. I certainly get that because it was the dark days of the pointless Touch Bar and the awful butterfly keyboard. But now an M2 Macbook Air for $1500-2000 (depending on options) is hard to beat. The only complaint seems to be in heat distribution. Some people use a cheap heat spreader on their desk. Apple definitely chose a stylish packa…
The thread is about having terrible support from Apple, and the comment you replied to was about getting away from lock-in, but you reply that the more efficient Apple Silicon is a "game-changer." It doesn't change any of the above deal breakers, so your comment comes off as tone deaf.
The comment I replied to was about bad experiences with Intel MBPs. Personally, I take no position on whether someone should or shouldn't use a Macbook. I'm not invested in that outcome. Use what you want.
But, at the same time, the particular shortcomings of Intel silicon MBPs is now out-of-date and it seems worth mentioning that.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?
#374Consider the Dell XPS15. It's a great laptop with a great display, keyboard and performance.
I still have Macs at home, but for business work and development the XPS15 is fantastic.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?
#375The current (2022) LG Gram come with Intel Alder Lake and dual USB4/TB4, they basically seem to be the only interesting competitors to the lightweight Apple laptops. The 14" model is 1.0 kg compared to the M1 Macbook Air at 1.3 kg. Linux compatibility is very good with current kernels (I had a few DRM/GuC restarts with 5.18, those seem to be fixed in 5.19), all hardware works out of the box. ADL-P power management is…
>The LG Gram series uses P3 displays, for example (most will be similar), which means that colors will be over-saturated and especially reds will be very intense and orange-y.... Wayland in particular has very poor support for color management.
This is a big issue for me. Sway/wlroots in particular seems to have no standardized way to assign an ICC profile to a monitor (Gnome and KDE do have the option though), or at least not one I was able to figure out.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?
#376My personal laptop is Dell XPS13 Developer ed. It's nearly a year old and works like a charm I can install anything I want, I can watch whatever. Battery wise last a lot.. 5-8h average depending on what I'm doing. At work I'm force to use a MacBook, a lot of dev tools don't work very well or doesn't work, every dev has different weird issues, every other day we have a different thing that doesn't work some of us had…
2 hour battery life on a Mac? That’s approaching unbelievable unless they are a decade old.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?
#377You don't say where you are located, but unless you are in one of the few places where Dell doesn't offer on-site next business day support then XPS 13 is a great laptop. Their support is amazing: "We're not sure what is causing it, but we'll send someone to replace the whole motherboard tomorrow." "OH, your currently halfway across the world on a island? No problem, we'll be there tomorrow" I really don't understand…
The company I work for used to buy XPS's for upper management and C-levels. We stopped because every single one of them had their batteries bulge so bad they popped out the keyboards and trackpads. At first we thought it was a problem of traveling with them in standby, but then it started happening on users' desks. Other Dell laptops don't have such a problem, it has to be something with the XPS design.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
Serious dev work is not done mostly on a small screen. Your laptop is a moveable computer that will be connected to your workstation monitor. I own a 14 inch macbook and rarely use it without a display.
Why drag around a laptop, if you have monitors everywhere anyway, and I assume you could easily add a full PC too?
In my case I sometimes work from home and sometimes from the office. The laptop is handy since I can bring it with me and use the same computer at both workstations, both of which have external monitors.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?
#379regardless of what you buy, I have a 1tb Linux/Ubuntu drive attached to my laptop through USB -c I dual boot into for certain projects. great for gaming/personal on windows and then doing work on the Linux drive. I share files via cloud services if needed and it works seemlessly
That is really interesting. Have you noticed a performance penalty at all? E.g. with large concurrent IO like compiling, or other dev use cases? eSATA never seemed to take off for that application, and on paper usb-c should be pretty good!
Go with an M.2 to USB adapter to avoid slower SATA speeds.
Re: Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?
#380I love my Lenovo ThinkPad. For a laptop, the keyboard is amazing and I have been using it for 4 years now without any major issue. I did have the CPU fan die on me, but with Lenovo's practically 10/10 repairability score for 40 bucks I overnighted another CPU fan, just unscrewed the back and replaced it myself.
I've had mine for 5.5 years. Still working great.