23 ms·

Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

• blackdivine 9y ago
  I'd say buy a new mid 2015 Macbook 15inches, some vendors might have it in stock. I recently got it for around $2000 USD in Pakistan. It's Core i7, 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD.
  • andy_ppp 9y ago
    Yes, having upgraded from one I fully regret this decision, mostly because of the keyboard and the £2000 after trade in. I’m actually a big fan of USB-C, it’s much better.
    • epmaybe 9y ago
      Not to bring this up in every usb-c comment, but what do you do for backwards compatibility? I consistently (nearly daily) find myself having to connect older USB devices into my laptop, but end up grabbing an adapter/dongle to connect the device. Flash drives, external hard drives, and SD card readers are my main issues.
      • Rjevski 9y ago
        I guess it depends on what work you do, personally I only rarely (if ever) use USB devices, but for the single one I have (a document scanner) I just leave the dongle plugged into it so it's basically part of the device - if I ever grab the device it's got the proper dongle with it already.
      • always_good 9y ago
        Well, it's the same answer as every other usb-c thread: a dongle.
      • andy_ppp 9y ago
        I actually have a dongle thing with monitor pass through, older usb, sd card reader, mouse etc on my desk. Get all of these with one port. Bought a cheap usb c enclosure off Amazon for backups too (swapping the hd) and I love it when I buy a new device that has usb c because I only need the cable that comes with my MacBook for camera and wireless headphones charging. So actually I’m nearly dongle free at this point. Still think it’s a real shame they didn’t keep the inbuilt SD card reader.
  • pseudometa 9y ago
    They have been around so long you could likely get an Apple refurbished one for a few hundred less than new.
    • tonyedgecombe 9y ago
      Yes, I picked up one on the refurb store, I've been very pleased so far.
    • hiram112 9y ago
      There are a few left from reputable sellers on Ebay and sometimes online vendors for around $1750. Without tax, that's about the same price you'll pay refurbished at Apple.
  • hiram112 9y ago
    My new 15" MBP 2015 just arrived from Ebay in the US. $1740 total which is about $400 less than you'll pay at the Apple store. I think the 2015 model has now replaced the older 2012 model (last that had upgradable parts) as the MBP that power users go for, even though it's almost $2k for hardware that'd be $800 on a typical windows machine.
  • Tunecrew 8y ago
    This is what I did when upgrading last year - bought a used one on eBay (which is a first for me - normally buy them new) - 2015 15" fully maxed out (fastest i7, 16GB, 1TB) and including the GPU, so it basically benchmarks only slightly slower than the top of the line current model. I already had a TB2 hub and other TB2 peripherals and extra MagSafe 2 power supplies, so no additional investment in adapters, etc. The kicker was the unit I bought has been purchased less than a year before I got it, so it was still eligible for AppleCare (you can check this w/ the serial number that most reputable eBay vendors provide). The time has probably passed for this, although you could still get a unit where someone else has already gotten it. All in was US$ 2,050 including AppleCare
• eecc 9y ago
  Latest Thinkpad Carbon X1 with extra warranty? It hovers around your budget max, well within if you can recover VAT
• emilsedgh 9y ago
  X1 Carbon is quite nice. I'm not sure if it has the performance you want. You should check out the specs. If the specs are good enough, give the machine a try. It's amazing.
  • MrMorden 9y ago
    If performance is a primary criterion, why get a U-suffix processor? The X1 Carbon is about thin and light.
• SlowBro 9y ago
  Lots of people love the Lenovo X220, which can be upgraded with simple screwdrivers to the latest and greatest processors and motherboards using fan-made motherboards. (That’s how popular they are, fans are making newer motherboards for them. I don’t know the experience, I’m using a very old Toughbook to devel since my needs aren’t great.) What’s with the hinges? I’ve never had one fail. Granted, I’m no road warrior.
  • meschi 9y ago
    Whoa, that sounds amazing. Do you have any links to the new mainboards?
    • SlowBro 9y ago
      These should get you started. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16572201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16572201 https://hackaday.com/tag/x220/ https://hackaday.com/tag/x220/
    • metafex 9y ago
      Link to the fb group: https://facebook.com/lcdfans/ https://facebook.com/lcdfans/
  • qume 9y ago
    I'm surrounded by fancy machines but the X220 just keeps on finding an excuse to be used. I would say I use it more than any other machine. The thing has a soul. I love it. I took > 20,000 photos today from a cessna using it's inbuilt ethernet port and four machine vision cameras. When you're paying for aircraft time and are bumping around a bit, having that thing on your lap makes you feel like you have a good wing man.
    • SlowBro 9y ago
      > I took > 20,000 photos today from a cessna using it's inbuilt ethernet port and four machine vision cameras. That sounds like a cool project. What was the goal?
• ericintheloft2 9y ago
  Yeah there are great alternatives to a macbook. Look at Dell XPS for example, install linux on it if you're like me and don't like windows.
• mailmrg 9y ago
  i am using HP pavilion. its quad core, comes with 8gb expandable to 16GB, no ssd (which is pain), full HD display matte (which is something i like compared to glossy), backlit keyboard and windows10. this is my replacement for my macbook pro 2011. so far pretty good to me. i havent tried linux. https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-Pavilion-15-Power-i7-7700HQ-GTX-1050-Laptop-Review.230382.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-Pavilion-15-Power-i7-7700HQ...
• Daviey 9y ago
  Thinkpad X-Series, great Linux support (I'm using X-250 still, going strong and onsite warranty is amazing)
  • bluedino 9y ago
    Beware the latest model - the X280. They removed the SATA ports and you can no longer upgrade the RAM
• robotmay 9y ago
  I use a 13" ThinkPad X250 when I'm not at my desk and I've been pretty impressed by it. I picked it up second-hand for <£600 and its performance is solid, and with good battery life (and hinges)! My only gripe is that the screen suffers from impermanent burn-in. I work mostly on Ruby and Rust projects, with quite a lot of containers. I'm not sure what the newer and bigger models are like, however, so maybe someone else would have more experience there. The other guys at work have all opted for XPS 13" machines. They haven't arrived yet, but I'm curious as to what they'll be like.
  • xab9 9y ago
    Now that you mention it on my X230, IPS panel, impermanent burn in is visible too, mostly with gray or dark wallpapers. I got used to it during the years though.
    • robotmay 9y ago
      Yeah it was only really noticeable when moving between the browser and my terminal (dark theme). I think they cheaped out a bit on the panel used in it, which is a shame as otherwise it's a cracking little laptop.
      • MrMorden 9y ago
        Is yours an IPS or TN screen? From what I've read the fleet buyers will do anything to save a few dollars a unit so Lenovo offers TN as a base model for that market.
        • xab9 9y ago
          Yep, there are two version, but mine is IPS, clearly visible from the viewing angle and the bios ID, yet the burnin is there. But again, the used laptop cost me around 1/7th of a Macbook Pro :)
• Giako 9y ago
  I suggest looking into the Dell XPS line (both 13 or 15 models, depending on your screen size tastes). I own a 2015 Dell XPS 13 and Linux support is amazing (long battery life, the laptop does not overheat and everything works out of the box on Ubuntu). The only weak spot is the webcam location in the lower part of the screen. Another good alternative could be the Thinkpad Carbon X line, but I don't have any direct experience. At work I use a mid-2015 Macbook Pro, if you stick to MacOs it's a very good machine. I also have an Ubuntu 17.10 partition on this machine that I use as main daily driver, but there are a few catches with this particular model (slight overheating, battery life is good but not great, I had to manually install drivers for backlight control and webcam).
  • robotmay 9y ago
    At the moment I think there are a few bugs with Linux support on the XPS 15 but they shouldn't last long. A friend of mine was having quite a lot of trackpad issues that don't appear to affect the 13" model.
    • dawnerd 9y ago
      Did they ever fix the sleep issue? That was a dealbreaker for me last year.
      • koehr 9y ago
        I don't have any issues with Suspend To Ram, if that is what you mean. I'm using a Dell XPS 15 9550 with Void Linux.
    • bhouston 9y ago
      I had no issues with Linux support, just follow the guides and you can install stock Ubuntu with no problems with GPU switching and docking station support and everything else.
  • latch 9y ago
    One problem with the 13" XPS is that 16GB configuration without a 4K+touchscreen display is only available in some countries (Europe, Hong Kong, ...?) I've been looking to get one (new macbook pro keyoard keeps breaking), but the buying experience has been pretty bad where I am. I'll be in Japan later this month, and I'll probably buy an HP Envy. The XPS doesn't come in the aforementioned configuration and the Carbon X is considerably more expensive (and I can't make heads or tail of their Japanese site). (portability is pretty important to me).
• mar225 9y ago
  Does anyone know if any of the laptop vendors that pre-install ubuntu will be doing any promotions or hardware updates to coincide with the 18.04 release?
• kayoone 9y ago
  If you want Linux, Dell XPS and Thinkpads have the best out of the box support, you shouldn't have issues with them, but you should probably get the last gen to be on the safe side. MBP with good performance around 2000$ leaves only the 2015 15" model i guess, that is still a very capable machine though and Apple still sells it. One thing to note is, that Intels new CPU generation enables 6/12 Cores/Threads for machines that previously had 4/8 and 4/8 for those that had 2/4 before. They are already in the latest Dells and should come to MBPs this year, but you'd have to wait a couple of years until they come down to 2k$
• csomar 9y ago
  You are probably priced out of the MacbookPro. I also need to make that decision (mine is from 2014) and a high spec macbook pro will cost in the tune of 3.200usd for a non-taxed jurisdiction (ie: HongKong or Airport Tax Refund) If you are willing to put that money, I'd recommend you wait a bit to see the release of the new mac, the prices and the specs. Otherwise, you'll have to start shopping on other brands and move to Linux.
• xab9 9y ago
  Thinkpad X230 here, IPS version, used ones are laughably cheap (Central/Eastern Europe). Battery, ram (two slots), keyboard, hdd are very easy to replace, everything works perfectly with linux (except bluetooth, but that's always problematic). On the downside the speaker and the touchpad are crap, so it's your call. I got a Macbook Air in case I gotta work on a project where osx is a must, but fortunately I haven't touched that fancy paper weight for two years now.
  • roscoebeezie 9y ago
    X230 user here (non-IPS). The touchpad isnt just crap, it’s unusable. I’ve also had issues with non-intel wireless card.
    • MrMorden 9y ago
      Which non-Intel card? The Atheros ones should work fine; Realtek makes hot garbage that should be avoided at all costs. (If it's a non-Lenovo card you'd need to disable the BIOS whitelist, but that's easy enough to do.)
      • roscoebeezie 9y ago
        Realtek.
• eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  Thinkpads are robust, reliable and have good Linux support. However, Purism Librem 15 is interesting as well: https://puri.sm/products/librem-15/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-15/
  • colomon 9y ago
    Huh. On the one hand, that sounds like a nice laptop. On the other hand, that landing page ad copy reads like someone took a challenge to add twice again to the snake oil of your usual Apple PR...
• chvid 9y ago
  I would get the 13" macbook pro without touchbar. Service and warranty is better. Resell value is better. And since you prefer Unix ...
• Protostome 9y ago
  I have been using ASUS Zenbook UX301L + Ubuntu for 3 years now, and I'm pretty happy with it. Having said that, I think the system requirements of a 2018 developer are quite different than a 2012 developer. Today you can accomplish vast majority of development tasks on a remote instance on the cloud. I haven't compiled or ran a program locally for ages (except for a browser/terminal/spotify/etc). I have a cheap EC2 instance that I use for coding and those sorts of things, when I need to run some more data intensive jobs (e.g. compilation, data crunching, etc) I just launch some more robust instances to take care of that for me. Therefore, in my opinion, a proper setup of a cloud environment that autoscales with respect to your needs is much more cost effective than a powerful laptop.
• multipass 9y ago
  Anyone with experiences running the Huawei Matebook?
  • SauciestGNU 9y ago
    Yeah, I have it. Linux works great, except the function key layer and stereo sound on the built-in speakers due to the unusual audio chipset. Performance is fantastic, the keyboard is passable, the screen looks beautiful, and build quality seems on par with my 2010 MacBook pro, and definitely better than my Lenovo Thinkpad.
    • TheForumTroll 9y ago
      Apple have to consider themselves lucky Huawei isn't having an easy time in the US. In my opinion they are better than Apple in design and hardware. I wonder how much lobbying Apple does against Huawei in the mobile market.
• unixhero 9y ago
  Thinkpad T580
• vasilakisfil 9y ago
  I have owned a MacBook Pro for many years (I think it was a late 2012 model as well) given by my employer in which I always run Linux in it. I was disgusted with the hardware support on Linux (especially on Wifi/Bluetooth) so I got a new XPS 15 inch (again from my employer), specifically the 9550 (from 2016), the non-touch screen (with FHD resolution). I can tell you that it runs Ubuntu very smoothly and has great battery life etc and I really like this laptop. But to be honest Dell comes nowhere close with Apple regarding quality of build. Although I truly believe the XPS is probably the best bet for a developer that wants Linux, it's probably like that because if I put everything in the basket (slimness, battery life, speed, hardware, linux support etc), there isn't any other better option outhere. I wish Dell was building better laptops but it isn't.
• AndrewOMartin 9y ago
  Maybe it's possible to develop in a more modular fashion which will reduce your compiler demands. This may not apply to you as you're doing Android dev, and I'm doing theoretical computer science, but when I adapted so that 99% of what my computer does is manipulate and store UTF-8 I found I could work perfectly well with the resources of an approximately £170 Chromebook running crouton.
• yutuco 9y ago
  System76 has a line of high end Linix Laptops, if you take their OS (Ubuntu based) you get a pretty direct alternative to MacBook Pro https://system76.com/laptops https://system76.com/laptops
  • koehr 9y ago
    System76 is definitely on my watch list. After using a Dell XPS with, what they call an infinity edge display (means, very thin bezels, hence a 15 inch display in a <14 inch case) and 4K resolution, I'm afraid I couldn't go "back" though :o
    • always_good 9y ago
      I miss my bezel on my Macbook Air. Now I always have fingerprints on the perimeter. Not really a feature I ever wanted, just makes it look better on the sales floor.
  • acobster 9y ago
    I use a System76 Serval laptop at work. Up til then I had worked almost exclusively on Macs. It's the best computer I've ever had.
• devnonymous 9y ago
  You can configure yourself a nice system76 or a Dell xps 13 for <$2000. I recently bought myself a Dell xps 13 and have no regrets. Although I don't do android dev I'd be surprised if it couldn't handle it.
• vbezhenar 9y ago
  I built PC for $1000 which is much more powerful than my 2012 MBP and enjoying it so far. I plan to upgrade it few years later and keep using it for years. For notebook I considered Dell Latitude 5x series and probably would buy it if I needed notebook, but for me desktop is superior option, I work from one place.
• rfolstad 9y ago
  Check out the xioami notebook pro great specs and price with macbook like build quality. i hear you can even run hackintosh on it. I have the xiaomi notebook 12 running ubuntu and its great!
• cyberferret 9y ago
  Geez I miss my old 17" Macbook Pro! Ok, it was a bulky form factor, but it was ideal size for me to do both my programming work as well as audio recording work on it. It still works, but it is maxed out at 8GB RAM, and struggled to run most modern software, including Logic Pro X with all my usual plugins. I wish Apple would bring out a 17" Macbook Pro again in the future.
• noir_lord 9y ago
  I went through this last year. I looked at Macbook Pro, Dell XPS15 and Thinkpad T470P. In the end I went for the T470P (i7-7700HQ (4 core/8 thread) w/ 2560x1440 screen, 16GB of RAM (upgraded myself to 32GB)) and the bigger battery (pretty much no optional with a 35W TDP processor). I tried the XPS15 but the keyboard was bad and the fit and finish wasn't awesome. I've had zero issues with linux support or the machine generally, build quality is excellent, I personally like the styling but many don't. It's so fast that I held off building a new desktop (and packed the old one away) and battery life is very good if you aren't maxing out the CPU, I've had over 8 hours of actual work time, screen is good, sharp and decently bright. In the UK it came with a three year warranty as standard vs 1yr for the Dell. It was also 300 quid cheaper than the Dell. I ruled out the Macbook Pro on price and the fact I couldn't put 32GB of RAM into it. At work I have a Ryzen 1700 with 32GB RAM and a SATA SSD, Intellij with a bunch of plugins loads faster on my thinkpad than that machine (NVMe SSD vs SATA SSD basically, the Ryzen should demolish any laptop processor with threaded code). It's a solid little machine. The new higher core count lower TDP intel processors look interesting, I suspect the T480P (if they do one) will have those, 35W TDP is a lot compared to 15W, I suspect that the 7700HQ will still beat them handily and extreme battery life wasn't an issue for me, anything over 5 hours is fine I'm never away from AC for longer than that.
  • michaelangerman 9y ago
    What version of Linux are you running where you have had zero issues, Thank you...
    • chillydawg 9y ago
      I'd also be interested in this. I've never once run linux on a laptop flawlessly - and I've been trying for a decade.
      • _sven_ 9y ago
        This depends more on the hardware these days. Most drives, CPUs, etc work just fine without configuration. Wifi drivers are pretty good these days. Maybe you'll hit a snag with those if you're really unlucky. The bad part is still GPUs. Even then, they're usually much better than 10 years ago. AMD GPUs have better drivers than Nvidia, in general. Older GPUs are better supported in general. Personally, I'm happily using Intel integrated for everything I do. But even then, even as much as I think Linux is the best choice of my available options, there are flaws as with any other OS. Regarding the Iris Pro, the mesa driver stack had a bug (related to srgb) introduced in August of last year which was only fixed this month and caused several OpenGL applications to fail to run. I think the Linux experience is still the best for development, and I've used the other two major OSs both extensively. As for practical advice, Manjaro is a great match between rolling release and well-tested packages.
• pjf 9y ago
  Go for Dell Latitude E74X0. I use an i5 E7470 with my mods and can highly recommend it. The price is fair.
• brightball 9y ago
  I switched from MBP after 10 years to a Dell Developer edetion. Ended up replacing Ubuntu with Mint but after a little over a year I can tell you I’m never going back. There is an acclimation period, but it will pass.
• nottorp 9y ago
  How about the touch pad? Is there any non Apple laptop where the touch pad works as well in Linux as the mbpro's in OS X? I'm spoiled and use my mbpro without a mouse ... because I can. I'd like to switch away from Apple when I need a new laptop because of the emoji keyboard. But I'd also like to keep using the laptop without a mouse. Is that possible these days?
  • ellisv 9y ago
    I had forgotten how terrible non-Mac track pads could be until I had to help my mom recover music on her Acer. It makes the entire laptop nearly unusable.
  • gtaylor 9y ago
    Recent versions of libinput are good enough to where I find myself frustrated very rarely these days.
  • PerfectElement 9y ago
    The Surface Book 2 track pad is pretty decent and customizable.
    • nottorp 8y ago
      But that only runs Windows. If i switch, I'll switch to something that runs Linux properly.
• bonsai80 9y ago
  Does anyone know of good options with 32gb of ram? I have been happy with my 2 different dell xps machines and ubuntu, but everything still maxes out at 16gb ram.
  • manveru 9y ago
    I'm using notebooks from Tuxedo, they preinstall Linux (although I usually put NixOS on them) and make sure that they have fully supported hardware. https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Notebooks/10-14-Zoll.tuxedo https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Note... has some models with 32GB options as well.
  • ericabiz 9y ago
    The Dell XPS 15 (not 13) can do 32GB.
• vesinisa 9y ago
  Very satisfied with my work Dell XPS 15, model 9560. My colleagues mostly use MBPs, and I always feel sorry for them if I have to use the latest model's keyboard. The XPS's build is rigid and it's possible to work full day with the integrated keyboard. Only downside is my model does not have the touch screen, which could be helpful if you need to run Android emulator on the laptop (as opposed to deploying to a real phone). I am an Android developer myself and have to use Windows for corporate reasons, but with WSL the developer experience is very similar to Linux. I can see that Dell XPS 15, model 9560 with 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB SSD retails for 2100 EUR in my country. You can later expand it to 32 GB of RAM, as there is a free expansion RAM slot (nothing is enough for Gradle ...)
• AKdeBerg 9y ago
  I would recommend the Razor blade stealth(late 2017 edition). Price is good and build quality is awesome. Touchscreen is a plus. If you use Ubuntu then try to install Ubuntu 16 or later. Drivers: https://github.com/openrazer/openrazer https://github.com/openrazer/openrazer Another thing to consider is the battery life. This is the weak point of this laptop. Review by Linus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TyUSf7og&t=210s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TyUSf7og&t=210s
• onyva 9y ago
  I've switched last year to Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu, and then Fedora 27 (now also installed on my 2011 iMac). Difference in performance when running a Linux based OS on both machines is quite noticeable, with a surprisingly much superior smooth and performante and stable Fedora 27... no glitches, and a pure GNOME experience... My only criticism against moving away from Apple, is customer support. I bought mine in Switzerland (customer center is based in Germany). The experience was overwhelmingly inferior. There's really ZERO responsiveness from Dell when facing even the most easy problems to solve. The response I got for complaining that I received a machine with a "Swiss" keyboard, was "that's your problem". Literally. I'll be very happy to provide the names of the customer support representative and her Superior, if anyone from Dell is interested in picking this up. My next machine will probably be a SlimBook (Spanish company).
  • hiram112 9y ago
    If you're going with Dell, pay extra for professional support. In the US, it was very good. Basically you aren't talking to offshored tier one customer support. Instead you get US based support who are empowered to get you up and running - they replaced several keyboards and a mobo next day, no questions asked. Hopefully it's the same in Switzerland.
• owenwil 9y ago
  Hey! Web dev/writer here that can relate — I've been writing about this after having gone through the same experience. In the last year, I've written about the Razer Blade, Eve V and about to ship a review of the Dell XPS 15 today or tomorrow (will post in this comment), which I ultimately settled on. It's a killer machine! I use Windows and WSL to do my work, and it's just as good as my MacBook setup ever was — except I have 32 GB of RAM _and_ a bunch of ports. Happy to answer any questions/offer advice, I've basically tried all of them — I am extremely curious about the new Surface Book 2 15", but it's been hard to get my hands on one. The post that started it all: https://char.gd/blog/2017/why-i-left-mac-for-windows-apple-has-given-up https://char.gd/blog/2017/why-i-left-mac-for-windows-apple-h... Razer Blade: https://char.gd/blog/2017/the-razer-blade-a-killer-macbook-pro-replacement https://char.gd/blog/2017/the-razer-blade-a-killer-macbook-p... Eve V review: https://char.gd/blog/2017/a-startup-made-a-better-laptop-than-anyone-else-could https://char.gd/blog/2017/a-startup-made-a-better-laptop-tha... Replacement tooling for Windows (given how good Bash on Windows is): https://char.gd/blog/2017/essential-apps-for-switching-from-mac-to-windows https://char.gd/blog/2017/essential-apps-for-switching-from-...
  • MiddleEndian 9y ago
    If you live near a large mall, Microsoft stores should have Surface Book 2s to play with. I went a few times before buying mine and am happy with my purchase.
  • owenwil 9y ago
    Apparently I can't edit comments, but here's my review of the XPS 15: https://char.gd/blog/2018/ive-finally-found-a-macbook-replacement-that-doesnt-suck https://char.gd/blog/2018/ive-finally-found-a-macbook-replac...
  • eknkc 9y ago
    I tried to switch to XPS 13 from MBP a couple months ago. My main focus was to use WSL but it’s so freaking slow on disk access that sometimes “git status” on a repo would take 10-15 seconds while it’s <1s on macos or linux. How on earth do you manage to work with it? every single thing hitting the disk was noticably slower. I went to Ubuntu and decided life is too short to use a crippled touchpad. Went back to MBP.
• nemoniac 9y ago
  I just bought a Thinkpad x230 to replace the one that I bought new soon after they first came out. It cost me €250. The original one cost more like €2000. It has a rock-solid build with metal hinges, i7, 16GB RAM. For me it's an ideal development machine. I run ArchLinux with a window manager that has all windows at full-screen size and can easily switch between them using keystrokes. Typically I only use a code editor, browser and terminals. I couldn't be happier. Or more efficient.
• anon1253 9y ago
  I recently wondered the same thing to replace my 15" 2014 Macbook Pro Retina. I went with the 2018 Lenovo Carbon X1 (16GB, WQHD, i7) and ... it's awful. Linux doesn't work due to a bug in the trackpad drivers, for which there is no reliable fix yet. And, I personally just can't stand Windows (that's a whole different rant). Hardware wise: the sound quality is so horrendous that even watching youtube is a no-go (think dollar store earbuds). That's on low volume, on medium-high volume, in addition to the audio quality, the whole case resonates making it very uncomfortable to even type. And, even though the battery life is rated at "15 hours", with just normal browsing and text edit I get 4 tops. Also it gets really really hot, for no reason (CPU < 10% utilization) which makes using it on my lap a no go. Some of this might be forgiven if it was actually faster, but it isn't. In day to day use it feels /slower/ than my 2014 machine, by quite a big margin (opening files/apps, input latency, jittery animations, even things like running an IO intensive task locks the whole machine, etc) ... that's probably just Windows though. I'm too late to return it, and if I were to sell it on craigslist or something I would probably not recover the costs reasonably. So for me the answer is "no". Nevermind the atrocious support Lenovo gives here in Europe. I ordered it end of February, I got it 30th of March. I ordered the extended warranty, but they want you to register the serial number within 30 days. Which was impossible since I didn't have the machine, the phone number was unresponsive, and the email replies took several days and got back with broken English and non-solutions to the problem. So that was 300 euro for extended warranty down the drain right off the bat. Mind you this was ordered from their official website (which also, incidentally, doesn't work in Firefox with uBlock Origin and uses the /worst/ payment gateway I've ever seen). I'm probably going to try to get the latest 2016 (I think?) Retina model if my 2014 machine breaks, and see how long that lasts. I know the barrier to entry is enormous, and there are fundamental problems with doing it better than Dell etc (patents), but a hardware startup that builds better laptops would be great. It feels so silly, but it's a solid reminder for me that consumer hardware progress has definitely stalled; a 2014 machine performs equally, if not better, than a 2018 one in the same price range.
  • Rjevski 9y ago
    Sounds like a nightmare, but I wonder if you can do a chargeback on your payment card, at least for the extended warranty.
• archi42 9y ago
  > What computer[...] I'll take you literally there ;-) I know laptops are becoming more and more capable, but if you don't really work on the go (it's not clear from the post): I've had great experience using a refurbished quality laptop for non-demanding stuff (e.g. ssh and off-time surfing, reading,...); and a capable desktop computer to do the heavy lifting at home (at the office I use the workstation that's supplied by my employer). My Sandybridge system is out-dated, so no use of giving specs, but Ryzen 1800X, and i7-8700k should all be well in your price range (plus a nice monitor or two; assuming you don't need an expensive GPU for your work). Maybe even Threadripper 1920X or the next iteration of the i7-7820X. All of these should easily beat anything that's the size of a MBP (my CPU cooler alone weighs over 500g = 25% of a 2015 2000$ MBP).
  • bo1024 9y ago
    Always a good option to consider -- a reasonable laptop and great self-built desktop can be cheaper than a great laptop (if any such exists). Especially if you can ssh into the big machine for high-performance tasks.
• robsun 9y ago
  I forgot to mention, <2000$ with 23% VAT :(
  • y7 9y ago
    If you're using it mostly for development work, can't you register as a single-person business and deduct the VAT?
• drivingmenuts 9y ago
  MacBook Pros haven't changed much since 2012, at least not in ways that would affect your work, in particular. You might upgrade the storage, but unless (or until) Apple replaces the Intel processor with one of their own (rumored), you're golden. Rumor has it Apple might switch to an internally-developed processor at some point, and that might mean a significant memory upgrade, but that's at least a year away, near as I can tell. In short, unless you're looking to change platforms entirely, don't worry about it. And remember, you can always boot camp. PC Magazine once claimed that the best machine to run Windows on was a Mac.
  • whywhywhywhy 9y ago
    >MacBook Pros haven't changed much since 2012 I use the pre-usb-c one at home and the post-usb-c one at work. They feel like completely different machines by different companies. I’d by my home machine again in a heartbeat. But I’d never spend my own money on one of those usb-c butterfly keyboard MacBook pros...
    • drivingmenuts 9y ago
      OK, yeah, I forgot about the latest ones. I have a mid-2015, which I tend to think of as the current model. So, I'll modify my statements to say "if you have anything before the current trainwreck and it's working fine, don't worry too much about it".
  • gilbetron 9y ago
    I used a MBP for 6 years, professionally, and this past fall switch to a Dell Precision 15". The new macbooks have a terrible keyboard, lost the magsafe connector, lost the lit apple symbol (loved it, because I could put an amusing sticker over it), have a ridiculously sized trackpad that I was constantly touching, only two USB C - one of which is always needed for power, and replaced the top set of keys with the "meh" touch bar thing. You can only get 16 GB of ram, and the guts are just fine. Windows 10 + WSL is awesome, the only minor issue being some permissions stuff. I find Windows 10 to be a more interesting, an effective interface. The only thing I miss is that the Mac trackpad has a bit better detection for when I accidentally brush it. Otherwise, I'll take my 3 USB C, 2 USB B, HDMI, SD, and audio ports any day - all of which I have used at some point in the past 6 months, incidentally. The new Mac keyboard alone was enough to make me want to toss the laptop into the trash. But, hey, it's slightly thinner, so you know, major productivity gains there!
• sfifs 9y ago
  ThinkPads are great value for money especially if you pair them with the latest Linux kernels. Lots of ThinkPads are Ubuntu certified. I recently bought a T480 and Bionic runs flawlessly on it.
• bhouston 9y ago
  I love my Dell XPS 15 9560, upgraded it to 32GB Ram, 1 TB SSD. Use it on my desktop with dual 32" 4K monitors attached to the Dell docking station with the laptop closed. Ubuntu and Windows works great. The key is the GeForce 1050 with 4GB in it. That just rocks. The CPU is good as well: 7700K. It is also very light, thin. This was actually the main selling point for me. Because I bring it everywhere with me. I've had it for a year. (Also I have never had this coil whine issue that some mentioned - for me it seemed like FUD, but maybe it affects someone.) There is an updated model coming out in a month or so, same design, just updated GeForce 1050 TI and a 6 core Intel Core i7 8xxx processor.
  • 20171026 9y ago
    I've had my 9560 for about a year and love it as well. I run Ubuntu on it flawlessly.
• storrgie 9y ago
  I wrote a bit about this [0] in terms of exploring Dell and Lenovo as options with a focus on Linux. I also quite like using LTE with my development machine, I'm doing so with the T470s and Fi [1]. I feel like for Linux the primary advantage that Lenovo has is the historical RedHat/IBM partnership where many RedHat developers are issued/choose Thinkpad as their primary machines to hack on. This typically leads to the crowd effect in ensuring the hardware has good support. I think the thing that makes me the most sad about Lenovo and Dell is the two incidents they've had in relation to consumer privacy [2][3]. [0]: https://storrgie.epiphyte.network/linux-on-the-t470s/ https://storrgie.epiphyte.network/linux-on-the-t470s/ [1]: https://storrgie.epiphyte.network/project-fi-archlinux/ https://storrgie.epiphyte.network/project-fi-archlinux/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish [3]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/11/dell-does-superfish-ships-pcs-with-self-signed-root-certificates/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/11/dell-...
  • owenwil 9y ago
    This is awesome, thanks! The biggest problem I had with even considering Linux on any of these machines is that the High DPI support is... non-existent, which just kills it for me :(
    • TheForumTroll 9y ago
      From your post it doesn't sound like you need it. What do you need it for?
    • storrgie 9y ago
      One of the things I feel is important is matching your external displays with the internal one, the 1440p in the T470s matches up with all of my displays at every desk I work at. This makes it pretty easy to move around and feel comfortable.
      • owenwil 9y ago
        So 1440p is fine, but once you end up in 4K territory it's nigh unusable. They've barely started on fractional scaling, so your choices are big or even bigger.
• sandGorgon 9y ago
  XPS 13 is a brilliant work of art. It looks good, is fully compatible out of the box with Linux and has many many more posts than the macbook. It is also USB type c chargeable. XPS 13 + fedora beats the crap out of a macbook.
• m-p-3 9y ago
  I'd either go with a Dell XPS or a System76.
• reza_n 9y ago
  Lenovo Thinkpad X1 carbon. I have a 2nd gen I bought in 2014 and its been rock solid for the last 4 years. I have been running Ubuntu since day 1 and have had 0 issues. I travel with this laptop daily, so its very mobile. Lightweight, quiet, and performance has never been an issue.
• tootie 9y ago
  Not a hardware req, but I've recently become quite enamored with Win 10 + WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) after years of using a Mac. WSL lets you run a lightweight Linux shell (Ubuntu, SUSE, Kali are supported atm) without a VM. It's purely for command-line purposes, no X, but that's fine for me. Windows for UI, then I can run all my bash in the Ubuntu shell almost seamlessly. You can run the shell directly from start menu or just type 'bash' from cmd or powershell so it can easily work in the embedded terminal for Android Studio.
  • philsnow 9y ago
    Years and years ago I used an X server on Windows named Hummingbird I think, could you use a native x server for Windows and run e.g. xterms under WsL?
    • ronsor 9y ago
      Yes. I use Xming with it.
    • e12e 9y ago
      Yeah you can - I think xming is still the best F/oss version. But for better or worse, you get ms windows window management. In their recent announcement, kali Linux showed off running xrdp, allowing log in via rdp to a local Linux desktop.
    • gpvos 9y ago
      Yes. I have used vcxsrv and it works fine. There is also xming.
  • baq 9y ago
    A win32 X server like mobaxtrem absolutely works.
  • gilbetron 9y ago
    Indeed, I love WSL, and find win10 to be a better interface than OS X. Updates for OS X just move things around and change the looks, Windows 10 adds great new things - like new options for Linux distros under WSL.
• hungerstrike 9y ago
  Absolutely. Just about any Windows laptop with Windows 10 will be faster, cheaper and give you a better user experience in my opinion. I vastly prefer it over a Mac or a Linux desktop because I find the Mac UI to be sorely lacking and I've never had a desktop Linux machine that didn't break itself over time. I've done Node.js based development on Windows since Node very new (~ v0.4 or so). I build Android apps with React-Native and in the past - Cordova, both which use the Android SDK/Android Studio to build. I've been using and developing Python 2/3 apps on Windows since forever. I have done Ruby on Rails, run a PostgreSQL server for development, played around with Golang. I honestly don't even need to use the Linux Subsystem for Windows to do anything that I personally need to do, but it's there and it's gotten very good reviews from users. The only thing I touch my Mac for is building iOS apps.
  • Rjevski 9y ago
    > any [...] laptop with Windows 10 will [...] give you a better user experience in my opinion Sorry but no, how can you call Windows 10 a good user experience? It's pure garbage, full of annoyances, inconsistencies (they still can't have a consistent right click menu UI between the one on the taskbar, the one on window titlebars and the one on files/folders in Explorer), dark patterns to try to get as much data out of you, etc.
    • hungerstrike 9y ago
      Pfffft. Sorry, but yes. My opinion remains unchanged despite your weak arguments. Windows 10 is the best desktop OS - the rest are trash whose users wish their OS had the same market share, hardware variety and solidity of Windows.
  • hungerstrike 9y ago
    I love how the Windows haters never really sell you on their choice by telling you how good their favorite OS is, instead they only talk up their bullshit negative views on Windows. If you just say that your opinion is that Windows is the best desktop, you’ll be attacked here on HN. It’s fucking amazing how people just cannot stand another person having an opinion. Then, once you bring up how widely used Windows is compared to their OS and how many more drivers and hardware you have compared to their OS – they clam up and just do the most pathetic, cowardly thing they can...on this page. Well fanboys or should I say anti-fanboys, fuck you. My opinion remains unchanged despite using every single desktop operating system that I could get my hands on over the past 20 years.
• shazow 9y ago
  I switched from a 2014 13" Retina MBP to a 2018 Thinkpad X1 Carbon (6th gen) and I'm extremely happy with it. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Carbon-2018-WQHD-HDR-i7-Laptop-Review.284682.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Carbon-2018... is the most objective/detailed review I've seen. One of my biggest anxieties was the fear of "upgrading" to an inferior device after a decade of being on Apple devices. Thankfully, that has not been the case. - The 14" WQHD HDR screen is remarkably more vibrant with similar DPI. - The battery life is almost double what I had before. - It runs cooler, faster, and quieter than my rMBP. - It's more than half a pound lighter than my 13" rMBP and is smaller despite having a larger screen. - The keyboard is just amaaaazing, I forgot what a good keyboard feels like. It's a joy to type on. - The build is excellent, still has that "Thinkpad" feel to it--like I could use it as a sledgehammer if I had to, despite looking quite slick. - Everything works on Linux except the fingerprint reader and S3 suspend required an easy tweak before working properly (add a boot flag). - I added a 4 year warranty for $140 USD, fair bit cheaper than Apple's. You don't get the Genius Bar experience but the Thinkpad brand is strong world-wide and there are certified local repair centres pretty much everywhere. (Fun fact: IBM still has a repair contract with Lenovo for the Thinkpad brand). In general, the machines are very serviceable with standard screws/components/etc. For every MBP I've owned, I've averaged bringing it in for repairs about 2-4 times per MBP. I've never had to repair the Thinkpad I had before that, and I hope this one holds up as well. I bought it the week it was released, so only the maximum spec version was available for about $2000 USD. (Lenovo perks sites or discount coupons usually get you 15-20% off the retail price, or buy from Costco.) My second choice was the 13" Dell XPS with 4K, but the deciding factor was the build quality and 4K is a bit too much (the battery/perf penalty wasn't worth the DPI gain over what the X1 Carbon offered). In general, it seems the Thinkpad build quality is much more consistent than Dell's. If budget was really tight for me, I'd strongly consider getting an older Thinkpad and replacing the internals. The Thinkpad modding community is very active, it's kind of remarkable.
  • blinkingled 9y ago
    I just got the 16GB/i7/512 with 2 year warranty from Costco for $1599. And I agree totally that it's an amazing machine! I have left it running W10 for now because I don't want to have to modify the DSDT for S3. Modern standby on Windows is magical - instant desktop after lid opening with the fingerprint reader! I wish it had better speakers though and I still feel like the low power CPU in a thin package might get bogged down when thermally throttled compared to full wattage one in a bigger config. But so far no such problem.
• source99 9y ago
  Can I try the Lenovo and sell out at an actual store? Does Best Buy or Frys stock these?
• fencepost 9y ago
  I see a lot of discussion that includes used ThinkPads, there's one caution I'll give if you go that route: avoid the __40 models (T440, T540, etc). I've not used an X240 but the TouchPad on the larger models is unusably bad.
  • mikojan 9y ago
    It's a thinkpad. Why not use the track point? I guess it's down to personal taste but that phrasing was weird.
    • saltcured 9y ago
      That's actually where it is worst. That generation of Thinkpads omits the physical buttons you normally use with the trackpoint, instead using soft buttons on the "click" style trackpad. It makes both functions much less usable.
      • mikojan 9y ago
        Oh wow you're right. I didn't know that.
  • bluedino 9y ago
    Thankfully, you can replace it with a _50 touchpad.
• anotheryou 9y ago
  A warning about Dell XPS (13") screens: if you take the matte display and like coding with dark color schemes it's horrible (but there might be a fix). It does loose all contrast on dark images. Saving battery they brighten the displayed image and lower the back light. This lowers 100% white to maybe a 80% white and makes for horrible contrast. For those affected: - you can test if you have this issue here: http://tylerwatt12.com/dc/ http://tylerwatt12.com/dc/ - for a fix you can go through the comments here: https://github.com/advancingu/XPS13Linux/issues/2 https://github.com/advancingu/XPS13Linux/issues/2 But be warned, the leaked firmware someone posted does not always work right (but fixed it for me). If I read the latest comment right there might be an official patch now (after years of this issue). (at least it doesn't say QHD in the file name) (this is what the last comment links to: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/drivers/driversdetails?driverId=312K3 http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/drivers/driversdet... ) Want another dell display goodie? Their "display manager" for external displays downloads updates via http, through your browser, from a domain other than dell.com, as an exe, signed by their contractor.
  • contingencies 9y ago
    Dunno which era that one is, my XPS15 9560 never dims at all, it's always bright, maybe that's because I'm missing some sort of userland or kernel driver, but frankly I like it this way.
    • anotheryou 9y ago
      It's an issue across generations (and even across manufacturers, it's the displays firmware after all). I think it's the 13" FHD version affected. My 15" is also fine.
      • flamtap 9y ago
        +1 to this, currently typing from a two-weeks new XPS15 9560. Manually installed Windows and graphics drivers, I have tinkered with the Intel HD Graphics settings a fair bit previously, however. Would not be surprised if that were the culprit to some extent.
• ratsimihah 9y ago
  I use both an MBP 2015 and an old Lenovo x220 running Arch Linux with i3. Both are equally outstanding to do front-end and back-end. But I can do native iOS on the MBP, play some games, and make music more easily than I could with the Linux Box. To each our own, but I moved away from Windows over a decade ago and never looked back.
  • always_good 9y ago
    Just know that you have the last MBP that I'd consider worthwhile. I bought a newer one and 2 keys have already popped off the new ultrathin keyboard. They didn't break, the C-clamps have just already worn out. This laptop is 5 months old. I type a lot. The keys now regularly come up with my fingers as I type. I'm traveling so I can't fix it. And this has happened to most of my friends in some way. Or constantly having keys misfire because a molecule of dirt got in there. A major letdown. I'm glad I didn't sell my old Macbook Air because I think I may have to use it shortly. My buddy already had to revert to his MBP 2015 for the same reason.
    • ratsimihah 9y ago
      That’s a shame. I should hold onto mine dearly then, they might be worth a lot on secondhand marketplaces soon. I believe they’re still selling the old MBP model without the touch bar, not sure if it’s the same build as the 2015 though, and there’s no dedicated GPU option. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MJLQ2LL/A&step=config# https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MJLQ2...
    • dgacmu 8y ago
      +this. I'm reading this thread 10 days after it was posted, on my purchased-in-December-2017 Macbook Pro, because I'm almost to the point of throwing it in the trash, and trying to figure out a better alternative. The keys keep getting stuck, the touchbar is too-touchy and gets phantom touches, and the increasing emphasis on locking down the OS has just utterly prevented me from getting the latest VirtualBox installed (until I get home, at least). I was on a 2013 MBP before and I miss it -- I deeply regret this purchase after four months of using it.
• contingencies 9y ago
  Dell XPS15 9560. I like the keyboard and haven't had the screen issues or coil whine mentioned by others. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dell_XPS_15_9560 https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Dell_XPS_15_9560
• shash7 9y ago
  I use a Razer Blade '14. I would say its probably the best laptop in its class - even beating the MBP.
• vladimir-y 9y ago
  Lenovo Thinkpad line, Dell Latitude line, HP Zbook line.
• partiallypro 9y ago
  MIcrosoft Surface line (Book 2 in hardware comparison)is just as solid if not more solid than a MBP. You can use Windows 10 and the WSL as others have stated.
• trisimix 9y ago
  Seriously? There's hundreds of alternatives.
• sigio 9y ago
  Just got the Thinkpad T480.... It has 2 SODIMM slots, you can put in a SATA or NVME drive (only 1, and only of the same type as shipped), it has great hinges, enough ports, excellent battery-life with the extended and swappable batteries and has good options for screen (1080p mat non-touch here). It has good linux support, and I got mine (i5-8350, 8GB, 128GB ssd for about 1200,- incl on-site warranty. I then replaced the RAM and SSD with some I still had lying around (32G and 800GB intel DC-ssd). The Thinkpads have good keyboards, good-enough touchpads and screens.
• goodoldboys 9y ago
  +1 for a ThinkPad. I'm running Ubuntu 16.04 on an x230 that I purchased for $200 and it works great for me for limited dev work. I'm thinking about purchasing a new one with maxed out specs and it seems like Ubuntu/Debian support is pretty solid on the new models, with some exceptions of course. The p51s looks like a good compromise between power and portability for me. edit: And the keyboard is amazing! you'll love typing on these things.
  • bluedino 9y ago
    We have been buying the P51 for our engineering and accounting staff. They are a great size, nice keyboard and screen and everything. We run Windows 10 on them, so I don't know how they fare with Linux. There have been issues with Lenovo pushing driver updates and goofy stuff like that, and the USB-C dock is next to useless (but I don't think that is specific to Lenovo) We ended up just buying the regular docks (the previous model docks won't work)
    • goodoldboys 9y ago
      Thanks for the data-point. Everyone seems to like the build quality, which is more important to me than ease of use with Linux. I figure I'm going to have to roll up my sleeves to get it working the way I want, anyways.
• lettergram 9y ago
  I use (and have setup many a developer) a T450+ Lenovo off eBay. Wipe it and put Linux on it, install an m2 SSD, 20 Gb of RAM, and get the bigger battery pack. Total cost is around $900 to $1100. It works better, with longer battery life, and I like the 14 inch display personally
• amiga-workbench 9y ago
  A 10 year old ThinkPad does me just fine.
• winduptoy 9y ago
  I develop on a Lenovo IdeaPad 120S ($249 in 2018). The plastic body is of higher build quality than my last $600 aluminum Acer. The trick is to live with less software altogether. If you scoff at 4GB RAM and 1.10GHz Celeron, remember that it only took 64kb and 0.043MHz to get to the moon. If you scoff at that statement, re-evaluate your life. "It's the Indian, not the arrow." https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Apollo-11-The-computers-that-put-man-on-the-moon https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Apollo-11-The-compute...
• strooper 9y ago
  I switched from MBP 2010 to Windows 10 after using it for 6 +years only because of disappointing MBP updates with higher price tags. I was so confused that it took me several months to decide. I got a good bargain for HP Envy x360 15.6" (i5 7200 with 8GB DDR4 and 256SSD). And I never looked back. WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) for windows 10 is definitely one of the major reasons I haven't looked back at the crappy new MBP lineup. Although I miss the long battery life of MBP, I get a lot more in exchange (tablet mode, excellent touch screen etc.)
• alexdeloy 9y ago
  I'm sticking to the XPS family for years now and a - for me very important - thing that rarely gets mentioned is the stunning support you can book with the machine. It's usually something around EUR 200-250 for 4-5 years and you'll get a worldwide coverage on the next business day, no matter what. I had issues with my current XPS in a beach house in Portugal earlier last year due to the sand being everywhere in the flat. A short call later I had a technician driving 3h from Lisbon to my place to fix the cooling system, no questions asked. The XPS 1530 I had before that had some issues with the GPU, Nvidia had some problems with the 8xxx series back then. I had to call them twice to replace the GPU without any problems. Also if your charger has an issue they usually send you a new one with UPS over night. Even though it might be declining a bit compared to what you could ask from them 5 years ago I think the support is still stellar and well woth considering if you're moving around once in a while.
  • theyinwhy 9y ago
    Ok but how is the Linux support?
    • SahAssar 9y ago
      The XPS'es can be configured to be preinstalled with linux, so pretty much as good as it gets from a major OEM.
• navjack27 9y ago
  Literally anything new is better
• usemac 9y ago
  I am a person who joined the Windows team at Microsoft in early 90s. So I am as far from am Apple fanboy as you get. So believe me when I say there is NO alternative to the MBP if the touchpad is critical to your usage. If your dont care about the touchpad then there are many
  • sebazzz 9y ago
    The precision touch pads, for instance on the Surface tablets, work quite well. How is touchingpad support still lagging?
  • maaaats 9y ago
    But if one wants a keyboard that's usable one has to steer away from the latest MBPs :/
    • 1stranger 9y ago
      It's fine.
• jnwatson 9y ago
  I recent got a 15 inch Dell Precision. I’m running a recent Ubuntu. I don’t recommend. It constantly throttles the CPI. I get lots of PCIe recoverable errors. The USB bus runs out of available throughout. Plugging anything Displaylink is a disaster. The camera/microphone is below the screen, which sucks more than I expected. It takes 2 hands to open the laptop. It is possible to plug in the power supply such that computer thinks it is charging but it actually drains the battery.
  • DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
    Interesting. I've purchased two batches of Mobile Precisions in the past: one about 8 years ago, and another about 4 years ago. (Sorry, I can't remember the particular models.) Both of them had really good Ubuntu compatibility.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  • sametmax 9y ago
    I own a dell xps 15. Same, i don't recommand it. Autonomy is abysmal, usbc support very poor, the bios took a year to be stable and the sound died after some months. Not worth the price tag. Mind you, the xps 13 doesn't seem to have the same problems. I still love my old samsung 9 serie and wish the brand would have worked out the quirks and made a new one. My next try will be a thinkpad carbon since every owner around me are very happy.
    • stefantheard 9y ago
      This was also my experience with the XPS15. Took a lot of struggle just for really basic hardware to start working properly on the ubuntu side, also extremely painful to install ubuntu itself and to have it recognize the XPS15's touchpad. I would not spend 1400$ and 10-20 hours to configure the damn thing again, do not recommend.
      • 9y ago
• hpcjoe 9y ago
  I bought a Sager (customized Clevo chassis) in 2010, and have just replaced it about a month ago with another Sager. My needs are somewhat different than pure editing/sw dev. I do quite a bit of analytics, visualization, and some CUDA bits. I could build a deskside (I generally prefer them), but I need to take my workstation with me. Apart from $dayjob MBP, all my laptops/servers run Linux. So Linux compatibility is a must. Things which don't work should be unimportant to me (fingerprint reader). I use Linux Mint, as I don't want to be messing around with my primary machine, and everything just works with it. Best Linux desktop experience I've had in 18 years of running Linux desktops. I opted for Sager/Clevo platform because of research, reviews, etc. I'll talk Dell, HP, and Toshiba below (which I've also owned). Clevo platforms are mostly end user upgradable and servicable, so if you need more of something, with a screwdriver and some patience, you can add it. This probably doesn't make sense for the people whom are concerned about damaging their machines, though as someone whom has built machines for ~30 years now, this is old hat to me. My 2010 model has 16GB ram, i7 quad core, NVidia GTX 560m , and now a SATA SSD, along with a PCI gigabit ethernet port, some sort of intel wifi card. It was showing its age, in that the GPU (on an MXM card) was starting to fail under load. I replaced CPU/GPU fans, cleaned the unit, though failure events are increasing, and the gigabit occasionally isn't recognized on boot. Add to that this it runs hot and loud. The fans are always on, and slightly more than a whisper during idle. During heavy load, it can be loud. Not ideal for my situation. No usable effective battery life, call it about an hour if I am lucky. Screen resolution is 1920x1080 or something. I had plugged it into an old monitor on my desk (recently replaced with a HiBP 3.8k x 2.xk) and it ran 1920x1200 nicely. It is heavy. And the battery clips don't keep the battery secure in the machine. So there's that. I looked again in great depth at the options. Here is where I talk about my Dell experiences. Every single Dell laptop I have ever bought, every single one, has had the infamous "unknown power supply" bug, which has only been curable by a motherboard replacement. These were high end workstations (4100), mid range consumer, and cheap consumer units. The take-away. I cannot and will not recommend Dell. I will actively recommend against Dell. Their build quality generally sucks. Their ability to survive more than a year before needing a motherboard replacement is lacking. Their cases and keyboards are a bad joke. They are bulky, annoying, and not serviceable by mere mortals. Linux sort of/kind of works on Dells. Not really, but hey, they market a ubuntu laptop. HP has generally been reasonable, usually offering some insanely interesting combinations of things at good prices, but then making other choices on the same platform which require you hack crap hard to make the thing work. I loved my big HP laptop. I hated that it used a NIC that only had windows drivers. This was back in the PCMCIA days, and I was able to find workable pcmcia NICs and modems (yeah, really dating myself there ...). I bought my wife and daughter Toshiba units one year to replace their failed Dells. Toshiba failed within 9 months of acquisition. Not serviceable, and Toshiba wouldn't honor its warranty. So, out to the dumpster with those. We bought a pair of Samsung laptops to replace those. Nice specs but cheap plastic case, and both eventually died with chassis fractures. By this time, I had had it with windows (7 pro) and its insanely broken networking. I gave them a choice on their next laptops: either Macs or Linux machines, as I was refusing to support windows any more. They played with my work MBP (linux at home on my laptop, MBP for work) and linux box. Chose MBP. Cost me a bit more, but it just works (as do the linux boxen). Nearing the end of life for these units, and they are looking at new ones in a few months. Short of it is, for their work, mostly editing, web stuff, etc. MBP is fine. Similar to SW dev in many ways (and daughter is getting into SW dev in college), so this works out well. For heavy computation, analysis, visualization, my new unit is quite nice. Sager NP8156. I upgraded from 16GB to 48GB ram (I run lots of VMs), and upgraded the WD 250GB SSD to 1.5TB of SSD. NVidia GTX 1060 with 6GB ram. USB C and USB3, integrated PCIe based NICs, good wireless. Easy to service. Runs linux mint 18.3 on a 3.8k x 2.x k monitor at high res. Even under load, it is quite quiet. Downsides: 1) I didn't opt for the higher end display on the laptop itself. 2) Battery life isn't great (2 hours). I brought it with me on a business trip to Korea a few weeks ago, for some of my dev/testing work, alongside my $dayjob MBP with emojibar (can't stand that thing). Better overall experience. I used it as a NAT/router for the team there with me, while running on it myself. What would make it better would be a better screen res and a better battery. Otherwise, for me, its a perfect workstation replacement unit.
• williamstein 9y ago
  Pixelbook in dev mode with crouton for $1K. It’s great for running Linux, except you can’t easily use Docker.
• sologoub 9y ago
  The Lenovo X1 Carbon is great and the Costco deal mentioned below made me really think about it, but 1080p screen is just not great these days and really constrains working screen real estate. Have you considered Google Pixelbook? 16GB RAM, 512GB drive, 7th gen i7 and a beautiful design for ~$1700. I’ve used crouton on an older Pixel and loved it.
  • kyrra 9y ago
    For ChromeOS / Pixelbook, keep an eye on Crostini as well[0][1][2]. It looks to allow running Ubuntu (or anything it seems) as a container in stock ChromeOS. Also looks like it may have gotten graphical support recently[3]. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/PixelBook/comments/7zxz57/howto_boot_a_ubuntu_vm_using_crosvm/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PixelBook/comments/7zxz57/howto_boo... [1] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/crosvm/ https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/crosvm... [2] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEAD/vm_tools https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEA... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/PixelBook/comments/89oq8o/just_launched_xclock_on_my_pixelbook_so_happy_i/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PixelBook/comments/89oq8o/just_laun... EDIT: screenshot of Android Studio on a Pixelbook: https://imgur.com/a/vRU8l https://imgur.com/a/vRU8l
    • sologoub 9y ago
      Your 3rd link is most relevant here as it shows Android Studio that OP stated is a must.
  • MrMorden 9y ago
    The X1C with WQHD is awesome. It can even be reasonably priced if you buy at the right time (got my X1C5 over Black Friday weekend w/ the EPP code). It does require a bit of fiddling in Linux to get the display scaling right; some DEs will happily do 2x scale and everything's great, but 1.5x is more appropriate for 2560x1440.
    • sologoub 9y ago
      On my work MBP, I just scale everything to smallest setting and enjoy the max screen real estate :) WQHD is awesome and the min that should be considered “professional” grade.
• _sven_ 9y ago
  HP Probook 470 G5 has great specs and great compatibility with Linux. My previous computer was a Macbook Pro, and this is superior is specs and Linux compatibility. So I'd say it's superior in every way that matters to me. And it seems you have similar preferences. Also, it cost about $1100. And it has a 17 inch screen!
• teunispeters 9y ago
  I'm running on a Dell Inspiron 7000 2-in-1 here. It's running circles around my (relatively recent) MacBook Pro, even considering the 1TB SSD on the MacBookPro and no SSD on the Dell (yet). Running Ubuntu 17.10 - it's working decent. keyboard takes a bit of getting used to though, having home/end/pgup/pgdn only through function+key is a bit of a curve. I prefer full keyboards.
  • dougmcunha 9y ago
    I'm also on a Inspiron 7000. My only complaint is the keyboard. No real Home/End/Page Up/Page Down really sucks, but you get used to it. When I'm on my desk I use an external keyboard anyway. Besides that, good performance and build quality, good screen, relatively lightweight and great battery life.
• oaiey 9y ago
  When you decide for Windows, make sure you have a precision touchpad. It is special hardware with a generic driver in windows handling all the multi touch goodness. Vendor drivers are usually crap.
• jasonvorhe 9y ago
  I've been working on Chromebooks since the 2013 Chromebook Pixel, though the laptop itself is almost irrelevant, because I've just moved everything into the cloud and work from a couple of VMs with tmux/vim/mosh. Of course that's not on option if you require a complete IDE, but it seems that support for local GUI apps is coming with a native ChromeOS feature called Crostini. People runing the Development channel already play around with various apps like VS Code: https://chromeunboxed.com/news/chrome-os-container-crostini-vscode-virtual-machine https://chromeunboxed.com/news/chrome-os-container-crostini-... They're also working for native support for running VMs via KVM, though it looks as if that'll be primarily targeted to the enterprise world. It's an interesting time for Chromebooks.
  • sethrin 9y ago
    If you need a complete IDE on a chromebook, you might check out Cloud9[0], which seems to have been acquired by Amazon. It gives you a decent editor and a small VM as a workspace, and the nice thing is that you can close the browser window and do something else, and the workspace will be exactly as you left it when you return, including any running terminal commands. I used C9 for a while before discovering Crouton[1] and subsequently GalliumOS[2], and it's still a pretty credible alternative to local development. [0] https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/ https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/ [1] https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton [2] https://galliumos.org/ https://galliumos.org/ (I have no affiliation with any companies or projects mentioned.)
  • antoineMoPa 9y ago
    I use my chromebook with crouton all the time. This semester for example, I did embedded development with mbed-cli (uses gcc for arm) and emacs. I also wrote LaTeX both on overleaf and on my chromebook (many gigabytes). I live with few hundred megabytes left and I listen to online radio instead of having gigabytes of songs. I delete stuff that I don't use and everything is fine.
  • tbyehl 9y ago
    Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster, those are exciting developments! I've been messing around with Crouton to run VS Code / .NET Core / PowerShell Core, but I'm not very comfortable with how that negates many of the security benefits of Chrome OS. Crostini will be a game-changer. I hope that stuff isn't limited to Intel -- I just bought an Acer R 13 and quite like it.
• mattlondon 9y ago
  Yes, there are reasonable alternatives to MBP for developers. I know that I might be an outlier here, but I personally find using OS X to be a frustrating experience - the only positive I could personally see for developers vs windows was (was - past tense!) the unix command line (linux has historically always been a struggle (drivers etc), so I personally steer clear). But now Win10 has a unix command line too so what is the point of getting a MBP? You pay excessive amounts for commodity hardware with a mac, then you're forced to use a horrible UI designed for your grandparents to use without getting confused. Yes, you can buy and install 100 extra apps to make the it more usable for serious users (BetterTouch, ShiftIt, uBar, iTerm etc etc), but then you're just throwing good money after bad. The UI is great if you're just watching netflix or reading your emails, but for anything serious where you're doing more than one thing at once I personally find it a really annoying experience. Current MBPs don't even turn on instantly like my previous 2 older MBPs did - it now takes a few seconds to wake up. The final nail in the coffin for macs for me is the awful, awful, awful keyboard on the new MBPs. I will concede though that the 2017 MBP is a nice physical item that feels solid and with good battery life though. Personally I'd just get a cheap Win10 Pro (dont get Home edition - you cant run docker natively without Hyper-V which is only in Win 10 Pro IIRC - I think that without Hyper-V/Win10 Pro you have to run docker in a linux VM) no-name/rebadged-Clevo with the biggest CPU, RAM and M.2 SSD you can afford. They just work out of the box and will be half the price of an equivalently-speced mac. I use a i7/16GB/M.2 Win10 machine for personal stuff, then at work a 2017 MBP Pro and a absurdly over-speced linux desktop (many-cored xeons, 64gb ram etc) - they all feel about the same speed in day to day usage in intellij & vscode etc. Clevo laptops are nice since they are aimed at small-scale "builders" targeting gamers etc, so they are often high-spec and easy to open up and work on. PS I've never had a laptop's hinge break on me, even the cheapest ones that I've dropped. If longevity is a concern, get a proper "thinkpad" branded one (but you'll pay a premium for this). Good luck! The transition off of OSX will be painful (YMMV), but stick with it.
  • donttrack 9y ago
    How is the Windows Unix shell these days? I have a Macbook Pro, which I installed Windows on, since I couldn't get used to OSX for my daily use (little things like Windows management and keyboard shortcuts and other stuff that added up). Went back to OSX mainly due to the native Unix shell. On Windows I had some problems on and off with sockets and sometimes I would encounter a system call that hadn't been implemented. This was maybe 10 months ago.
• 013a 9y ago
  Haven't seen these two suggested: The Razer Blade is a pretty excellent machine. Its gaming focused, which surfaces a little bit in their design language, but all that really means is more beefy specs. The Stealth model in particular might be a great choice, or you can up-market. I've heard nothing but great things about it. The Surface devices are also an expensive but excellent choice. They do suffer in that I don't believe any of them are shipped with 8th gen Intel chips or Thunderbolt yet, but once they get that updated they'll be worth looking into. They are very pricey though; its basically $2000 minimum for any model with 16gb of memory. Really, if you want MacBook-like quality, you need to realize that there's a reason why they're so expensive, and you can't really cheat the price by looking at Windows. There are a few manufacturers that are getting the prices down, like Dell's XPS line, but they make sacrifices in build quality, touchpad quality, etc. If you're fine with that, then yeah you can save $500.
  • knappe 9y ago
    I have a late 2016 Razer Blade Stealth and I love. I was able to install Ubuntu without issue and the machine works flawlessly. At the time it was easily the best 13" machine on the market and I wouldn't doubt still is.
  • aschampion 9y ago
    I briefly had a Razer Blade for development and returned it for several reasons, the top two being: 1. Enormous screen bezel, which made it silly to lug around a laptop with the screen real estate of one much smaller. 2. Without careful, tedious manual power management in linux the cooling fans routinely spin up to dust buster sound levels under normal use, which is unacceptable if you exist around other human beings. The Surface Book 2 is an interesting option, but the linux support, while improving through community effort, is still spotty [1]. At the moment it has many power draw, heat, and noise issues. Also, everyone I know who has had a surface device has had to have it serviced or RMA'd at least once, which is not acceptable for something so expensive from such a large vendor. [1] https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surface https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surface
    • 013a 9y ago
• libeclipse 9y ago
  I know someone's going to mention it but I have the Dell XPS 13. Mine's a 16GB spec with a 512GB SSD, and honestly it's more or less perfect. I have mine dual-booted, Windows 10 and Arch Linux. Windows is great for gaming and Netflix and Arch has great support for the XPS 13. The only laptop that I would recommend.
• tlavoie 9y ago
  I recently migrated from a mid-2013 MBP, primarily because I was increasingly disgusted with the lack of control over my own system. I knew (more or less) what I was getting into when I bought it, but that choice grated as it needed work. The battery had pretty much gone, and not only wasn't something I could fix, but the Apple stores I visited didn't carry the part. Turns out it's not just the glued-in battery, but they replace the entire top deck - keyboard, trackpad and all. I don't live near one of their stores, so it was going to be a multi-day commitment either way. Local authorized service place was able to get it done, except that the new battery caused the charging circuin (on the main board) to die. I had a choice to make. I went with a Thinkpad P50 - not the thin, flat laptop at all, but a "mobile workstation." Great keyboard, display is good too (matte), and upgradeability in spades. One SIMM slot is a 16GB module, but there are still three others. Multiple drive bays, only one used. A battery I can replace without tools or delay, when that day comes. I went with Linux Mint (Ubuntu-based), and it's been great. There's still a small Windows partition I left for a couple tools, but rarely use that part.
  • opencl 9y ago
    The real kicker is that the P51 with a Xeon E3-1535M v6, 64GB ECC RAM, Quadro M2200, 1TB SSD, and 4K screen costs about $500 less than the 15" MBP with 1TB storage. The weight difference compared to "thin and light" 15 inch models isn't even that dramatic, it's all of one and a half pounds heavier than the MBP or one pound heavier than the XPS 15.
    • crispinb 9y ago
      Not in Aus, where most tech is price-gouged, but the Lenovo workstation-grade stuff seems particularly egregiously so. Your spec p51 for example is $7200 vs $5000 for the MB Pro 15" 1TB. A better machine, certainly, but much more expensive.
    • sridca 9y ago
      Exactly. It is a shame that the Thinkpad P* series is not as widely known. I have a P71 myself (exchanged the new MBP for it with no regret).
• FabianBeiner 9y ago
  If you don't care about a bad (VGA) webcam, check out the Asus ZenBook 13 UX331UN (https://www.asus.com/Laptops/ASUS-ZenBook-13-UX331UN/overview/ https://www.asus.com/Laptops/ASUS-ZenBook-13-UX331UN/overvie...). Pretty decent hardware, looks good, runns smooth, pretty "cheap".
  • oceanman888 9y ago
    I brought one as well and would recommend it. latest 4core cpu, nvidia card makes it even capable for light gaming. 1000 dollar is really affordable for all this. only complain is that the keyboard is not that good.
• gkop 9y ago
  I’m on my 4th Thinkpad T-series - T520, T530, T450s, T460s - each one was a a winner. I ditched the T5XX series when they borked the keyboard layout by adding a numpad. Used to run Ubuntu, now I run Debian, stable or testing depending on point in release cycle at install time. I plan to take another look at Ubuntu now that they gave up on Unity. A coworker is happily on the T470s (first USB-C in the series). I always get 1920x1080 since my eyes are accustomed to it, but multiple coworkers are happy with 2560x1440. Used to get the Nvidia cards, now very happy with the integrated Intel graphics. In general, last year’s hardware requires almost zero messing with Linux to make everything work, whereas with the latest hardware, be prepared to solve a couple minor issues. Ubuntu’s font rendering or Infinality are both amazing and better than macOS or Win10 to my eyes. I’m ridiculously excited to eventually upgrade to a T480s because it’s the first in the series to offer a quad-core CPU. They’re selling the quad-core with Intel graphics which is exactly what I want. I hope Lenovo did a good job with the thermal engineering... Thanks to all the open source developers that deliver this totally rad experience on Linux, Debian, and Gnome <3
  • aviraldg 9y ago
    Do your co-workers not have issues with HiDPI support on Linux? I've heard it's not the best experience and can require quite some fiddling to get working correctly.
    • bonoetmalo 9y ago
      Gnome has always worked pretty well with High DPI. But yes Linux display managers are generally pretty bad, as I learned with my 1440p 13 inch laptop as recently as 2015.
    • Symbiote 9y ago
      I have no problems on KDE for home use, I think the problems are mixing multiple screens with different pixel densities.
      • mixmastamyk 9y ago
        Works great with Mate.
• himom 9y ago
  Lenovo. The. End.
• systematical 9y ago
  I nabbed this for $1,100 just over 3 years ago: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314703 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1683431... It's giant and my next system will def be smaller. But it does the trick and I plan on getting another 2 years out of it before replacing. Here's what I do when I am looking for a new laptop. I really research the CPUs. I don't need the best, but I make sure I am getting good performance for what I spend. I live on here while researching my system https://www.cpubenchmark.net https://www.cpubenchmark.net I don't care much about the brand of the system, some people laugh that I got an Acer. Whatever, I am concerned with whats inside, not outside. Does it come with bloatware? Doesn't matter as I install Linux on it as soon as I get it. Just before I do that I burn the bastard with prime95 to see if I can get it to fail before setting it up. Never had problems before.
• JoshMnem 9y ago
  I went with ThinkPad T460 with Ubuntu 16.04 and it has been great. I had looked at Macbooks, but the ThinkPad was about $1,000 cheaper, has much more RAM (24 Gb), more battery life (11+ hours using Linux), has a matte screen (lower glare), 4-year next-day at-home repair plan, and was under USD $2,000, including tax and shipping. I'm very happy I didn't get a Mac. It's my 3rd ThinkPad and all of them were great.
• wheresmyusern 9y ago
  do not buy an xps. i bought a thirteen inch xps and the linux compat has some minor issues and the power supply died on me less than a year after purchasing it. my next computer is a thinkpad for sure.
• littlestymaar 9y ago
  > Performance of the computer is quite important for me. I'm an Android developer, compilation of a big project I'm working on takes enormous amount of RAM and CPU nowadays Do you have important mobility concerns which makes you really need a laptop ? If RAM & CPU are your main concern, and you want a powerful machine with a reasonable budget, going for a desktop would make sense.
  • modzu 9y ago
    +1 or potentially look at a CI cluster if compilations/whatever is most taxing the laptop
• solarkraft 9y ago
  If you want a MacBook-Like experience without paying the Apple tax, I recommend offerings from Xiaomi. I'm typing this on a 13 inch i5 machine with a 256gb ssd, 8gb of RAM and a type C port for charging (ca 750Eur when it came out), but recently there have been new offerings with larger screens and better specs. Great budget option and very good with Linux.
• dep_b 9y ago
  One important thing to understand about MacBook SSD performance since the 2015 is that the 0.5 and 1 TB SSD’s are much faster than the smaller disks because only the larger configuratios will use all available channels. I would never buy a 128GB MacBook.
• modzu 9y ago
  lots of comments are suggesting alternatives but my opinion is that, no, despite its flaws there is still nothing better on the market than MBP
  • modzu 9y ago
    (the only thing being close is the thinkpad if you want to try the switch from trackpad to trackpoint)
• mixmastamyk 9y ago
  Dell Precision 9560 works really well with Ubuntu in my experience. Not perfect though. Keyboard is usable but thin, 16:9 sucks, glossy screen sucks, had to get a matte film cover to tone it down. 4k rocks though, thunderbolt docking station pretty good also.
• bayindirh 9y ago
  A bit of background: I'm a system administrator of a large computing cluster, and I also develop high performance scientific computing as my side-academic life. The software I develop targets clusters similar to I administer, so I use a lot of Linux, and the software I develop makes the development workstations scream during testing. I personally own a MacBook Pro, and my office gave me (actually I wanted them to buy) an HP EliteBook 850 G2. HP EliteBook is a terrific Linux machine. Everything works out of the box. The backside is accessible with a single latch. It has semi-metal body, reasonably slim and light. Better, it lasts 7 hours on battery (which can be easily replaced), has upgradeable RAM, a separate M2 slot for an additional SSD if you need multi terabyte hard drives, and an eDPI screen (I don't remember the resolution, but it's high). Oh, it has 180 degree hinges, which are non-exotic type. If you want to go berserk, you can add WWAN with GPS support. It has some convenience features too. Glass touchpad, a very good backlit keyboard and better than acceptable speakers. If you want good audio, headphone jack is very good sounding. The machine I use is dual core, very low voltage variant, but the performance is more than enough for 90% of the tasks I perform at office. Since it's very low voltage, it's very very quiet and cool. All-in-all it's a developer's dream if you want to step away from MacBook. Addendum: I disabled the external AMD GPU on it, I use Intel's on-cpu GPU, and I've driven 1920x1200 screens over DP without any problems, inc. hot-plug support. Last, but not the least: HP has a fantastic BIOS which also has nice amenities like advanced charge cutoff and restart percentages like Lenovo Thinkpads.
• lunulata 9y ago
  System76 is groovy for laptops if you like Linux for your dev env
  • MaxfordAndSons 9y ago
    They're allllright. I have a ~2 year old Gazelle. Performance and linux support wise it's great. But unfortunately almost all of the physical attributes are minuses: keyboard, monitor, build quality, design/look. I'm planning on trying something different next time I buy.
• sabujp 9y ago
  thinkpad carbon x1 v6
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• bandrami 9y ago
  I run an ACER chromebook with GalliumOS. I don't really run anything on the chromebook itself except a text editor (and sometimes even that is X-forwarded from a build server); I store code and do builds on virtual servers via remote commands I've enapsulated in Makefiles. It cost about $150, and if it ever breaks I'll just go buy another one.
• djhworld 9y ago
  I've got an early 2015 MBP and had it for a few years now. Usually I buy a new laptop every 3-4 years and save money each month to put torwards it, but I can't help but think that as the next upgrade looms, do I really want to spend £1000+ again on one of these things? Especially now that the latest line of MBPs seems to be pivoting further and further away from what you would normally expect from the 'Pro' line of products. My biggest bugbear right now is memory, and maybe this is just my own failing of not being judicious enough about what things I have open or how may tabs Firefox is running, but I feel even 16GB just isn't cutting it anymore. It feels like laptops have been on a ceiling of 16GB of RAM as an upgradable option for years and I'm not really sure why, is it just the power consumption/battery life that's a concern?
• shocks 9y ago
  I have an Asus Zenbook UX430U and it suits my needs. Modest CPU/RAM, runs Linux great. 14".
• wodenokoto 9y ago
  > Performance of the computer is quite important for me. I'm an Android developer, compilation of a big project I'm working on takes enormous amount of RAM and CPU nowadays (with new Android Studio it's even worse). Why not get a stationary as your compilation / unit test server and a smaller, cheaper, more nimble laptop for out and about?
• manish_gill 9y ago
  I'd love to have a better hardware quality build than my current Macbook Air, but my problem is that I've become quite fond of MacOS over the last few years. I don't miss the days when I was running Xubuntu and trying to tinker out everything to get the basics working. Windows hasn't been to my taste lately either. Are the current generation of Linux desktop environments as user friendly as MacOS?
  • confounded 9y ago
    Nope, but there is way less tinkering required than there used to be. For the last two years, getting going with modern peripherals and a browser/terminal/editor hasn’t involved any futzing (I use ThinkPads). Gnome is the standard for ‘Mac-like’ desktop environments on Linux, the version shipped with Ubuntu 18.04 will likely be well polished and welcoming to new users. Personally, if you like to avoid a mouse, I’d recommend a tiling window manager — the quality and range of these on Linux is just fantastic. The full concept doesn’t quite seem to exist anywhere else. Extremely un-friendly to a novice user, but extremely productive and enjoyable for ‘professional’ use.
• trynumber9 9y ago
  I have a Huawei Matebook X. It's closer to the Apple MacBook, being fanless with only a dual core CPU. It works for what I do (C# compile times are not bad at all). It was $750 when I bought it and I really like it. There's a new model, the Matebook X Pro, which would be closer to your needs with a quad core CPU but it looks like it'll be more expensive. https://consumer.huawei.com/en/tablets/matebook-x/ https://consumer.huawei.com/en/tablets/matebook-x/ https://consumer.huawei.com/en/tablets/matebook-x-pro/ https://consumer.huawei.com/en/tablets/matebook-x-pro/
• pavelevst 9y ago
  Probably you should keep your current laptop as long as it makes you happy or consider some high spec retina mpb 15”. Recent models with touchbars don’t have big performance improvement compared to previous generation (can search for benchmarks). For non-apple alternatives, there is a big chance to end up with tick square price of plastic (that shows square, plastic-looking windows), more elegant models with such specs will cost you more then 2k... I would recommend you to look at iMac’s. IMO it’s a very good choice for software development and design tasks. I’m using iMac 27” ‘11 at work and it has same performance as latest mpb 13” (mid spec). You can choose old version with upgradable ram or new one with cool screen and slimmer body (non-upgradable ram)
• ktosobcy 9y ago
  There is na nice, related blog post (part of a series about switching form macOS to Linux): http://bitcannon.net/post/replacing-a-macbook-pro/ http://bitcannon.net/post/replacing-a-macbook-pro/
• cs02rm0 9y ago
  This is so messed up. A company I work with used to have everyone use MBPs, bought for them if they didn't bring their own and people were actually excited to receive them. No one seems where to go next but it's pretty obvious no one wants a new MBP. I've had a 2013 i7/16GB/1TB from new. I might be tempted by the coming Dell XPS with Linux but the last Dell laptop I had have me electric shocks until the day that the plastic hinges finally gave out, which puts me off a bit. I just don't understand the need to push so hard on keyboards that you can't replace keys on, ports that are so widely used, slow upgrades or at least out of step with processor release cycles and above all Touch Bar. Is it really all down to Cook's direction?
• rpedela 9y ago
  I use a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu and I love it. Most of the complaints I have seen are either nitpicky or because the early versions did not have good HW support in the kernel. The latter has largely been fixed, and the former is only relevant if you are also nitpicky (which is okay!).
• miles_matthias 9y ago
  Not if you need XCode
• dingleberry 9y ago
  I do not recommend lenovo yoga (thin flippable) the keyboard is ok; however, i often get double press on random key press -> get 'dd' if i press 'd', 'xx' if 'x', 'zz' if 'z', etc enough to frustrate me and throw me out of flow every time. not worth it. os is arch linux if that matters.
  • looki 9y ago
    On top of that, mine (Yoga 910) has an incredibly sensitive fan that not only gets loud easily, but also has a very high pitched frequency. My desktop computer gets loud easily, but it's white noise so it's fine. This is not. EDIT: "On top of that" was bad wording, I do not encounter the double key issue.
• voodootrucker 9y ago
  Gaming laptops make great developer workstations. I love my MSI GS63VR. Nice having real CPU and GPU horse power in a laptop. I threw linux on it right away and never looked back. It has all the ports (HDMI, mini-dp, and USB-C), even ethernet. It's as slim as a MBP and much lighter. The trackpad and battery life suck though, and at 180W, don't try to use it on a plane. The Razor Blade series is really good too.
  • eudora 9y ago
    What's the battery life like on the stealth?
• mmphosis 9y ago
  No. I am looking at going back to desktops, actually mini-PCs, and are there any reasonable desktops? No. Going forward, I am looking at: • a fanless Intel-based mini-PC with way more than 16Gb RAM running Linux, but I decided to delay this as I don't like Intel chips • a new MacBook with Intel chip, but again I don't like Intel, and new Apple hardware means joining the Apple ecosystem, giving Apple my credit card, paying for proprietary apps, paying to publish iOS software • wait until 2020 for a MacBook with Apple ARM chip, but again I don't wish to join the new Apple ecosystem • a Power or some other CPU (not ARM, not Intel) running Linux, these are better but expensive
• shmerl 9y ago
  Lenovo laptops running Linux is a good option (if you are ready to put up with their firmware mess).
• alexandercrohde 9y ago
  As somebody who got later into macbooks, and begrudingly had to admit they were objectively superior, here's what I'd like to know about a competitor. 1. Does the screen ever flicker? 2. Has a key ever come off? 3. Does it ever fail to sleep when you close the lid 4. Would you worry if you drop it from waste height 5 times (closed, but running, onto a hard-wood floor) ? 5. Have you had any driver problems, have you ever had to reinstall the OS? 6. Have you had it crash one you more than once every 3 months? 7. Have you had any glitches (audio dying, network problems, charging problems) Saying no to all of these is my personal benchmark for my air. I haven't used PC laptops in a while now, so I'm genuinely curious if the higher-end competitors can compete on this reliability benchmark.
  • peterashwell 9y ago
    big +1 to this response. I got a lenovo (thinkpad x series) and it hit 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7, obviously implying 4. I tried really, really hard to like the lenovo. It just was not built good enough for every day use. It was just a piece of shit. One more very important point: If it breaks and you need support, what happens then? MBP: take it in to a nearby apple store. if not immediate fix or replacement then very rapid turnaround Lenovo: Send it to china! and wait 6 weeks and maybe you'll get the right computer back, and maybe the problem will be fixed
    • detaro 9y ago
      You can bring a Thinkpad to any authorized service partner and have them fix it, just like with Apple. And unlike Apple, Lenovo actually has on-site support if you want it (even standard with some models). I had one Thinkpad that developed issues, but they always quickly fixed it.
    • soperj 9y ago
      I've had a problem with my thinkpad hardware once. They had a guy actually come to my house.
  • NiceGuy_Ty 9y ago
    I'd be terrified about #4 with any laptop that I use. I run Fedora on an XPS 13. I've never run into #1 or #2. I hit super+L by habit before closing the screen so I don't know about #3, but closing it while typing this comment put it to sleep. I've only reinstalled the OS once to get rid of the built in Ubuntu in favor of Fedora for #5. For #6 I haven't had it crash on me, but I have been RAM-swapped to death after having too many Firefox tabs and Docker builds at once. The only audio/network/charging problem I've run into is that Spotify doesn't bind to the keyboard Play/Pause events.
• pmorici 9y ago
  Panasonic Toughbook 54. It's got outstanding build quality and durability and is still user upgrade-able.
• lancewiggs 9y ago
  Consider your use cases - how often do you really need the computer to be portable? Do you work in more than 2 locations? Would a powerful (and cheap) desktop and a skinny (and cheap) laptop, perhaps with a great screen, work for when not at your desk? Laptops command a premium price for portability and desirability, so if you can reduce your need for those then you can get a lot more value for your hard-earned money.
  • gurkendoktor 9y ago
    OP wouldn't even need to buy a cheap laptop until the 2012 MacBook dies. If you need to work in 2+ locations, a mini PC that goes in your backpack might also do the trick. Slightly cheaper than a laptop, more ports, more likely to have great Linux support. I used to carry a Mac Mini around for client work, wasn't bad at all.
  • nickthemagicman 9y ago
    Op may just be able to get a bluetooth keyboard for his phone and be good to go.
• gaius 9y ago
  If I was buying a new laptop now, it would be a Surface, no question. Even better than a ThinkPad in my reckoning. Great hinges too. https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/surface https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/surface
  • starky 9y ago
    I came to this conclusion in 2014 when I was trying to buy a smallish laptop for travelling and couldn't find anything below $1000 worth buying. I ended up going with a Surface Pro 3 because despite being more than I wanted to spend, it was by far the cheapest device that didn't have dealbreaker compromises.
• el_cid 9y ago
  I use a 2017 Thinkpad at work... The screen is worse than my MBP, the touchpad is crap, it crashes once a month or so. I could have used it as a replacement for my rMBP 15 2012, but I got a 2017 13" nTB MBP for home use and side projects. And I love it - except the keyboard which is a downgrade... The TouchBar is retarded.
  • phillnom 9y ago
    What OS do you run on your Thinkpad?
• valuearb 9y ago
  I have a top of line new MBP and love it. I don’t use the keyboard, the touchbar, the screen or the hinge. Instead it drives two 17 inch monitor and bluetooth keyboard and track pad (yes i paid extra for slate gray trackpad). I will argue that its nearly impossible for a developer to pay too much for their computer system. When you spend close to 2,000 hours a year using it, every moment saved by faster processor/memory IP, everything that was easier to read, write and do thanks to the best keyboard, input device and best monitors, pays for the extra investment many times over. Of course, I have to admit at some point when I have to travel, I will need to use the built in keyboard and at that point I will be very sad.
  • RyanShook 9y ago
    Just got the 13” MBP. Love the form-factor and power, still enjoy MacOS over others. Miss MagSafe power, annoyed by the touchbar and lack of inputs, really dislike the keyboard (shallow/cheap feeling).
  • cmcginty 9y ago
    Spot on regarding price comparisons between brands. The cost difference is really not significant over life of the device, and in historical context of computing power per $. I get that maybe the MBP is not bleeding tech right now, but fit and finish is well above all others, and the larger user base and local support stores means the consumer experience is hard to beat. BTW, I must be one of the few that actually like the new (non-touchbar) keyboard. The only thing I would change are the arrow keys.
• wemdyjreichert 9y ago
  Dell XPS 15 9560
• jwatte 9y ago
  The touch bar was the death knell for me. Unusable. I had OK experience with Razer Blade 14 if you need high end GPU, and good experience with Dell XPS 15. The Razer and MacBook don't go higher than 16GB, the feel lets you put in 32GB RAM, which is useful for lots of tools or virtual machines. I run Windows 10 host and VMWare Workstation guests (Linux and docker.) Works for me, YMMV and so on. Just don't inflict the touchbar on yourself.
  • crispinb 9y ago
    Of the developers using macs I know who have bought touchbar-equipped macs, a couple find it OK, most hate it. None are enthused. Only a self-worshipping Designaaah-darling could have entertained for more than a moment the absurd bad dream of replacing a whole keyboard row with a minuscule screen. For this same daft confection to make it to production is the apotheosis of .. well, I don't know. Something very, very broken.
• ubik_ 9y ago
  In love with my Dell XPS 13 + Linux combo.
• lurker9 9y ago
  I'm on a P51 Lenovo, I had been using Apple laptops for the past 15+ years, I run Fedora with Gnome on it and have no 'major' issues with HiDPI, I highly recommend switching to Lenovo hardware, luckily I don't need any Mac specific apps, but if you did, there are certain configurations of Lenovo laptops that are relatively easy to get OS X working on.
• jasonlotito 9y ago
  What would I recommend? A 2015 MacBook Pro. Seriously. Until Apple's fixes all it's mistakes, the 2015 model is still the best money can buy.
• me_bx 9y ago
  My two cents, biased against Mac: Mac is not a reasonable choice for developers. Reasonable choice is an open source system, configured to suit your needs. As a developer, you want to be in control of the system, not the other way around. Well, at least, with Linux, you're much more in control, and have ways to be more efficient in your work. Regarding the constraints you mentioned: * cost: it's often posible to find good deals online on expensive but high quality professional machines like the thinkpad x1 Carbon. Have a look at second-hand sites, auction sites. Some sell refurbished machines, under warranty, as good as new. * performance: you may want to use a lightweight linux distribution, consuming only a few hundred Megs of RAM, and leaving more to your build system... Oh, and try to use something stable, e.g. debian rather than ubuntu. Focus on your work, not on troubleshooting regressions.
  • whalesalad 9y ago
    Your statements here are pretty ridiculous. SO many developers use a Mac because it’s a wonderful environment. I feel like you’ve never used a Mac based on your comments.
• cmurf 9y ago
  HP Spectre http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/spectre-laptop/overview.html http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/spectre-laptop/overview.h... I have the 2016 version and the only gotcha I've run into running Fedora out of the box is suspend to RAM does not work (sleep, wake, sleep, wake, sleep, wake). But it's easy to fix: Create a file in /etc/tmpfiles.d/ -rw-r--r--. root root suspendfix.conf w /proc/acpi/wakeup - - - - PWRB w /proc/acpi/wakeup - - - - XHC That's it. Powerbutton will still work for suspend and wake. Gory details of bisecting this and ACPI debugging with kernel devs https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=185521 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=185521 And one other small problem with easy work around, older kernels (Fedora 27 and older so circa kernel 4.12 and older) do not instantiate USB if the USB-C to USB-3 adapter is connected during boot. So if you boot a USB stick with one of the two USB 3.1 gen 2 ports, you'll see GRUB 2, it finds and loads the kernel and initramfs but then you end up in a rescue shell because the kernel itself can't find the stick. Workaround 1 is to boot off the powerport / USB 3.1 gen 1 (not Thunderbolt) port using a fully charged battery and install. Work around 2 is Fedora 28 which has a kernel that's working correctly, so you can use either of the USB 3.1 gen 2 ports just fine while still being plugged into power.
• spo81rty 9y ago
  Surface Book 2 has been an awesome machine for me. I had about 5 laptops last year trying different ones. This one stuck.
• namibj 9y ago
  If you can live with the thought of not buying "new", I would suggest you take a look at Thinkpads, specifically those which were leased to a business, but where the lease was broken before term was over. These can be had at about a year of age, and the come in good shape. You can get an i7 Haswell with 65W TDP (and if you clean it once a year, the CPU will not be throttled before you start to undress) and an Nvidia Chip with 1440p 15.5" screen for under 1000$ if you look hard. As you say you are form Europe, you might be able to order from Luxnote (not affiliated, just trying to keep the market for servicable laptops from collapsing), which are based in Germany. Expect to supply your own SSD, and make sure the Wifi modem has Bluetooth if you need that, as well as support for the standards you need. If you want to use the internal antenna(s) for cellular modem, make sure to try and get that with the laptop when you buy, as the BIOS is a little restrictive in which PCIe devices it will accept. In some cases that can apparently be fixed by hacking it, but caveat emptor. Some models have two batteries, one fixed and one swappable, others only one swappable. The former allows trivial swapping while running, the latter would require you to use some sort of 20V-ish supply capable of providing at least 45W via the charging port, if you want to change the battery without loosing whatever is in ram. If you care for safety and do not like fuzzing around with things breaking/being unreliable, beware of unofficial batteries. They might well refuse to charge, though the Laptop generally runs on anything that leads it's battery controller to deem further discharge to be safe for laptop and battery. If your performance demands would not be that high, you could get a somewhat older, but rather solid Thinkpad, you'd be surprised by the price/performance ratio for even some as old as e.g. an X60s, which is one of the few which allow the ME to be fully disabled. Those are available for a very good price on Ebay, but the issue is that they only feel fast if the software is fast, and judging from your described subjective feel of speed, your software is not fast. I hope you get a good one. And try to not freak out about the mentioned Numpad on the newer T5xx ones, as they just put the available width to use. If you can get the hang of the trackpoint, they still have the best, as far as I know. At least my Thinkpad makes me use it sometimes, while I don't even bother trying with the HP Elitebook.
• walshemj 9y ago
  You maybe need to step back and look at the bigger picture you seem to need to run many vm/ docker instances - and need a lot or RAM a CPU cores. would not a decent whitebox system using ryzen or threadripper be better suited? Do you really need to work on a laptop? it sounds like you'd be better off with a bigger desktop and a dual monitor set up - don't get caught up in the glamor of the apple brand.
  • StillBored 9y ago
    I'm going to second this. Monitor real estate is one of the most important machine productivity metrics in my experience (the other being build/test turnaround time). Its seems there are always trade-offs when trying to drive a lot of pixels even on the most displayport/MST devices. Besides that, building large projects is one of the areas where multicore systems really shine. The projects I work on have hour plus build times on the 2-4 core class machine one generally finds in a laptop. Those times can be shrunk to <5 minutes with a fairly inexpensive desktop machine these days. Basically, I would reverse it, get the best desktop class machine possible, and a fairly low end laptop with a decent screen. Put the desktop wherever you do the most work, and then remote into it with the laptop. If your stuck on a plane/etc, work on a presentation or whatever..
• yolobey 9y ago
  Just in the process of outfitting the office with Thinkpad T480s's. Why not X1 Carbon? At first it was the MX150 option for deep learning on the go, but we decided to drop that because it was going to be a pain the ass in Linux and it's not a very good GPU anyway - better to ssh to the server (The variant in T480s is 25% slower even though it has the same model name). Now it's just the price... Not quite worth the upgrade price for that many machines, and the limited upgradeability means we can get 8gb now and add 8 more when there is a bit more liquidity.
  • bhouston 9y ago
    The mx150 is a piece of crap GPU. It performs at less than half the performance of a GeForce 1050 and a third of a 1050 ti (which are in the Dell XPS 15 series.) https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html
    • yolobey 9y ago
      Yeah and that's the 1D10 variant. The 1D12 variant in T480s is even slower. If it wasn't for the Linux driver headaches I still might have gone for it to have another way to check if CUDA code was running properly without having to ssh to the central server.
    • MatthiasP 9y ago
      You need to compare it to its predecessor the 940MX. Its a huge step up from that.
• nunez 9y ago
  Surface Book 2 13.5". Light, great performance, detachable, writable screen with a 180 deg viewing angle, AWESOME keyboard, best trackpad on a Windows machine, 8+ hour battery life. $1300. I use an Ubuntu machine spun up by Vagrant for all of my development needs. The only Windows applications I use are Word, PowerPoint (consultant) and Chrome. The next best option is probably the Thinkpad X1 Carbon, which is an awesome laptop in its own right.
• akandiah 9y ago
  The great thing about a Macbook is the warranty. If you have coverage, you can get it repaired anywhere in the world. It's a pain with any other manufacturer.
• mheat2 9y ago
  HP 8770w https://www.ebay.com/itm/3D-Design-17-3-FHD-HP-8770W-i7-3940XM-Blu-Ray-2TB-2x1TB-SSD-32GB-K4000M-4GB/173245238525?hash=item2856388cfd:g:b28AAOSwrIlavtiT https://www.ebay.com/itm/3D-Design-17-3-FHD-HP-8770W-i7-3940...
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• imauld 9y ago
  I recently purchased one of these with the upgraded CPU and RAM(4.0 ghz CPU 16gb RAM): https://system76.com/cart/configure/lemu8 https://system76.com/cart/configure/lemu8 And I enjoy using it much more than either of the Macbooks I've gotten from work (A MBP 2015 and currently a MBP w/ the emoji bar). The keyboard is worlds better than current iteration MBP keyboards which I can't stand. I like just about everything better on this laptop than on the MBP save for the speakers which are pretty crap but I knew that going in as the form factor is made to be as portable as possible. The Pop OS is pretty nice but definitely has a couple of annoying bugs (nothing deal breaking though) but you can also have the laptop shipped with Ubuntu or just install whatever distro you are most comfortable with. Performance wise it's just as good if not better than the MBP, almost everything feels a bit snappier but it could just be my imagination. I haven't benchmarked them or compared timings or anything. IMO almost any laptop you install Linux on is better than a MBP so I may be a bit biased. The hardware is nice but overpriced and the software is just... terrible IMO. No native package manager, OS updates as of late are of questionable quality at best and their plans to start making their own chips don't fill me with confidence. I had also looked in to this model: https://system76.com/cart/configure/galp3 https://system76.com/cart/configure/galp3 But it was a bit more than I wanted to spend at the time, however it does fit in to your budget so might be worth looking in to.
• fjsolwmv 9y ago
  > In 2012 I paid around 1000$ for MacBook Pro + Samsung SSD (256GB) + 16GB RAM How is that possible,unless you bought a 2008 model and upgraded it?
• fjsolwmv 9y ago
  > At work I'm using some new MacBook Pro which (i5/16GB/128GB SSD) which is noticeably slower than my current machine. If this is true it's because of corporate antivirus or Enterprise spyware or something not running on your personal machine
• robert-brown 9y ago
  I'm quite happy with my Chuwi 12.3 LapBook on which I installed Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. It cost me less than $300 -- display is really nice, comes with 6 GB RAM. I upgraded the 64 GB of storage with a 256 GB m.2 card, which cost about another $100.
• ledgerdev 9y ago
  Has anyone used the HP ZBook Studio? It looks ok, but I've never heard much about it. https://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/laptops/zbook-studio-mobile-workstation-352510--1 https://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/laptops/zbook-studio-mobile-w... Also I would look into these MateBook X Pro - 14 inch 3x2 screen! I may buy it just for that alone. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh8qvqFVVbc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh8qvqFVVbc) Dell XPS 15(9570) - Same crap keyboard, but available for pre-order in a couple weeks and linux support should be good. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqeIPp8Zkg0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqeIPp8Zkg0) Thinkpad t480s - almost perfect but screen is a tad to short/small.
• Per_Bothner 9y ago
  I'm very happy with my (previous-generation) HP Spectre x360. Lightweight, 16GB memory, 512GB SSD (you can get up to 2TB now, but what I have is plenty for me), Thunderbolt 3, convertible to tent or tablet mode, good battery life. I dual-boot Fedora and Windows 10. And the prices are quite reasonable.
• GiorgioG 9y ago
  > Performance of the computer is quite important for me. I'm an Android developer, compilation of a big project I'm working on takes enormous amount of RAM and CPU nowadays (with new Android Studio it's even worse). Buy a powerful desktop PC and you’ll have a few bucks left over. Seriously, I don’t understand why developers continue to shortchange themselves by using laptops for heavy workloads. If you have to work away from your office, Remote Desktop to your desktop machine from your old laptop.
  • atomicrat2552 9y ago
    This implies your orgamization allows remote desktop
    • scarface74 9y ago
      The original poster said price is important to him - implying that he is buying this for himself. If I were buying a development machine for myself for under $2K, I would get the cheapest 27" 5K iMac with 16GB of RAM - quad core i5 3.4Ghz. Why futz with Linux for development when you get an iMac? You get the benefits of not having to deal with Linux and the oddities Of HiDPI support and you get a Unix environment (OS X is certified Unix). I would probably spend $2600 to get 32GB RAM and 2TB fusion drive.
  • fshafique 9y ago
    Technically, he could even get an AWS WorkSpaces account and run his entire dev environment in the cloud, and continue using his existing laptop, tablet, or phone to remote in.
  • Cacti 9y ago
    1. Not everyone can remote in due to security reasons. 2. Not everyone can remote in due to crappy upstream bandwidth or latency. 3. Even if they can, not everyone is pulling enough FPS to make it reasonable, depending on the type of work they are doing.
• samstave 9y ago
  You know what I want; A hybrid laptop+cloud machine. I.E. I want to buy a machine that includes a certain amount of cloud compute with it. and storage. Imagine having a machine that comes with X# of cores and Y RAM and Z storage included in the price of the machine. Every time you turn that machine on, it "mounts" that VPC that is included with it and you can dev local, and push to your VPC at will. I want my machine to be virtual, even though I am physically in possession of it.
• maxsilver 9y ago
  I am also an Android Developer. I bought an Alienware 15 for $1500 USD. (i7-7700HQ + GTX 1060) Pros: - It's crazy fast. - It's built like a tank. Amazing build quality. - Zero hardware issues of any kind. - Great cooling. No thermal throttling, even when max-ing the entire machine out for over an hour. - Super fluid response. (G-SYNC) - Tons of IO and ports. - Lots of upgrade potential. (Spare PCI-e and SATA drive slots, replaceable ram) - Zero issues with the screen hinge. Cons: - It looks like a teenagers toy. (It isn't. But it sure looks like one, with LED rim lighting and such). - It's heavy. - The battery life is bad (~2 hours) I tried the thin-and-light notebooks previously (15W i7-7500u stuff, like the XPS 13 and the Blade Stealth). The battery life was way better on these. But for Android work, I haven't been happy with them. They just aren't fast enough, and even from a cold boot, a single compile would send them straight up to like 95c and thermal throttle. I also looked at some "business" laptops with similar specs (45W CPU + dedicated graphics), like an HP EliteBook and the like. They seemed fine, but all seemed to charge an extra $500 or so, just to remove the ugly gamer aesthetic. I opted to buy the gaming machine, and just take a tablet to meetings.
• epynonymous 9y ago
  after reading through a majority of the comments here, there are several camps: lenovo t4xx/t5xx/x1 carbon, dell xps/precision, mbp, razor edge, and 1 mention of hp’s envy. these are all worthy suggestions, but for me, i develop golang backend applications along with web and mobile frontends, for ios development i have no choice, but mac. i am loathe to learn ximiran (i think this runs on windows and maybe linux, but why even bother with this ide ). but running on mac is not a bad thing, the driver and hardware support is great, i spend most of my time tinkering with my development projects as opposed to drivers, kernels, and system configuration, this is a real win for me. i always have this philosophy of developing in the same environment as production, at least from the perspective of operating system, so that means ubuntu linux. i have no problem running ubuntu on fusion or virtualbox (free), usually i give them 1g ram and sometimes i have multiple vm’s running at the same time. i have dual boot for win10, but i hardly use windows. if i develop on mac, typically i use visual code, xcode. i bever use homebrew, that’s just too hacky, i prefer using a linux vm directly. in terms of hw, i have both the mb (i3/8g/512g ssd), and because i thought the i3 was inferior, i also purchased the mbp 13 (i7/16g/1t ssd), but i found that the i3 could compile golang programs and xcode swift relatively at the same speed. so for the affordability of the mb, i get portability and pretty good perf. memory and upgradability are issues with all mac laptops, but i think 8g is tolerable. ideally 32g ram would be best, but at that range, power and portability become a tradeoff and at that point, you should seriously be asking yourself why you wouldnt just consider a desktop/workstation/server and go for say 256g memory. the mb could be had for about 1000-1500 usd, the build is good, i dont have the same ossues with keyboards that others have mentioned because i mostly stay plugged into a large monitor with kb and mouse, there sre rare occassions where i’m truly remote where a monitor is not accessible, but that just means i’m doing some light stuff like ppt, some web dev, or what not. the macbook is light, good enough for most dev, and probably fits in your price range. get virtualbox and install linux for coding, use mac for everything else, web browsing, watching movies, social apps, photos, accessing all those neat devices without fussing over drivers. you probably would compare how uch bang for the buck you’d get from a thinkpad versus mb, but mb experience is much greater, i stopped using windows since mac os x first came out, linux has never really been a desktop option because it’s been too much effort, perhaps it’s a lot better now, but running linux as the main os is nerve racking for a laptop, i much prefer a vm, you can run xorg and get full gui experience as well, but typically i use visual code and access my code on linux vm remotely, so my linux vm’s are usually server versions.
• mgamache 9y ago
  I see a lot of comments about the Dell XPS line. I like my XPS 15. But please be aware of the silly webcam placement (due to the infinity edge screen). If you work a remote job and/or have to use the webcam for communication it's really an unflattering angle looking up from the keyboard. You can have a video chat and have your colleagues check for boogers at the same time.
  • racer-v 9y ago
    Absolutely buy an external USB webcam if this is the case.
• ryan-allen 9y ago
  Dell XPS 15 is pretty good, but it's not quite as nice as a Macbook. If you can get away with not using a laptop, build a PC. Superior performance and upgradability. My 5 year old i7 desktop is still going strong!
• anonbanker 9y ago
  Either the Acer Swift 3 or Dell Inspiron 17 5000 series. Both are Raven Ridge-based. Both are well under $2000. Plenty of extra money left over for all the drives/upgrades/peripherals you want.
• peter303 9y ago
  Look at System76 Linux line. The same configs MacBooks are about a third cheaper. The cases arent as elegant as Apples or other big name manufacturers.
• Inversechi 9y ago
  I own an XPS 15 and have had to have it replaced 3 times during the past 4 years. Thankfully the latest one hasn't had any issues. Running Antegros (Arch based) at the moment but was using Ubuntu before without much in the way of issues. I do a mix of mobile and web development more so the later and the machine definitely feels powerful enough for this workload. My work laptop is a T550 which is pretty solid running also Ubuntu and doing purely web development. I'll probably get it replaced soon as the CPU feels somewhat limited running VM's and multiple docker images.... topped with multiple PHPStorm IDE instances.
• peter303 9y ago
  I have been waiting for ninth generation Intel laptops. So far just Asus is shipping a laptop with an Intel i9 6-core 12-thread CPU. I am hoping beyond hope that Apple leapfrogs to i9 at the June 2018 dev conference instead of the ancient i5 technology.
• OutThisLife 9y ago
  Why not build your own comp?
• ende42 9y ago
  I just moved from a late 2014 MBP running Arch to a Precision 5520 (more or less the business variant of the XPS15) running Alpine. Both feature an i7 HQ, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD. Both where about 2200€. The Precision is a good laptop but it's my first that isn't better in every way than the one I had before. On Par: * Fast (for a laptop) processor. * Fast SSD. 900MB/sec on the MPB, 400MB/sec on the Precision. Anyway fast enough. * 16GB RAM. Just enough for me. Good: * Linux support. Very important for me. Suspend to RAM on lidclose works reliably. WLAN works. (Display dimming just works (as with the MBP), no coil whining here). * Display. Native HD (had to use Linux' crappy scaling on the MBP). Non-glare. (And the MBP had the display stain issue) * 3 years on site guaranty, if on site isn't possible, I can keep the SSD. * Can change RAM, SSH, battery without voiding guaranty. Bad: * Display. I'd prefer 16:10. * Sound is slightly worse when laptop is used on a table. Sound is dismal when laptop is used... on the lap. * Keyboard on the new Precision is worse than the one on the 3 years old MBP. Will use the UHK in the office anyway.
• zelo 9y ago
  I'm working on Xiaomi Notebook Pro 15" i7-8550U/16GB/256SSD (+ one empty slot for ssd)/Nvidia MX150. I'm using it with Ubuntu for python development and it costed me around 1200$. Battery life is around 8h of work in PyCharm (Jetbrains IDE based on the same technology as android studio). I know that some people overclock gpu under windows because of cooling capacity. I'm overally very satisfied and recommend it if you are willing to have notebook without warranty.
  • john_knight 8y ago
    I'm considering buying the exact model as it seems that has the closes form to a MBP trackpad.Is 3/4 finger swiping working? mainly for the workspace switching. I'm guessing there is option/support to use it, but don't know if Ubuntu supports that out of the box.
• cweagans 9y ago
  I just went through this process, and landed on a Thinkpad T480.
• sisteczko 9y ago
  Consider asuspro notebook (https://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Asus-AsusPro-B9440UA-Core-i5-8-GB-Laptop.220402.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Asus-AsusPro-B9440UA-Core... - it is in german, so you might want to run it through google translate). ASUS never disappointed me with a lack of support for Ubuntu. So does this Asuspro. It is incredibly light and durable. You can easily hold it in one hand and type with the other. The battery runs for at least 4 hours of continuous work in my setup. If I turn off the screen, it can survive the whole night on the battery. Supports 2 core/4 threads Intel Core i7 up to 16GB RAM. Works everything except maybe for the fingerprint reader, which I never tried/tested. To get best battery performance use tlp and throttle the perfomance on the batteries to e.g. 30% (use CPU_MAX_PERF_ON_BAT setting)
• gargravarr 9y ago
  My company (British) runs Ubuntu and MacOS. On the Ubuntu front, we mostly use Dell XPS 13s (9360s), which are okay, except the trackpad is quite poor - many use external mice even in meeting rooms. We've tried dropping X11 configs in to improve it, but the results are very mixed. I personally am not that impressed by the keyboard or the webcam location choice. On the positives, the performance is good, and they're very light yet sturdy. The other machines we have are Dell Precision M3520s - I found one unclaimed and swapped my XPS for it, and have found it to be great. Again, all the hardware works out of the box. The keyboard and trackpad are both much better than the XPS, and the 1920x1080 15" screen is crisp and sharp. It's a bit of a brick, especially compared to our MBPs, but it has a healthy complement of ports. I run a 4k 32" external screen via Thunderbolt/USB-C, while also having USB-As and onboard ethernet. Disk speeds are awesome, and it has nVidia hybrid graphics should I need them (although I keep them disabled and use the Intel onboard during the day). Battery life varies considerably since it packs a quad-i7 (7820HQ) but a full workday is probably practical. The RAM and SSD are also upgradeable. I would definitely look at the Precision series over the XPS.
• runjake 9y ago
  With all its warts, the new machine should be significantly faster than your 2012 with a SATA SSD, especially if memory swapping is involved. It sounds like there's something wrong with it. That said, every time this thread comes up (about weekly, but I ain't complaining) people recommend Thinkpads (eg X1 Carbon) and Dell XPS 13 laptops.
• senjindarashiva 8y ago
  Personally I would definitely avoid the modern mac-books, I bought one to try it out and after replacing two keyboards in a period of roughly two months. This only solved the issue of the keys getting stuck, it did nothing to the feel of the keyboard itself. So I finaly gave up and sold it to replace it with a Lenovo T470 which isn't as good looking but it does seem a lot more durable, and the keyboard is a lot better. The only thing I miss is back-lit keys, which apparently is available but I missed it in the checkout...
• halis 8y ago
  In my opinion, the answer to this question is no. But that's the thing, that's the answer for me. For you who knows!