5 ms·

Honestly, those specs, especially the resolution, are useless if the screen is glossy and has no matte option.

benjamincburns 13y ago
I came here to say just that. I'm a retina MBP owner. I'd dump it in a heartbeat for something powerful with long battery life, high DPI matte screen, and decent enough Ubuntu support. Are manufacturers missing out, or are we just a really tiny market?
- kleiba 13y ago
  Seconded. If any manufacturer intends to give a "developer notebook" a go, a matte screen would be the first thing on my wish list.
  - darwinism 13y ago
    System76 just launched a Linux friendly Ultrabook with 1080p IPS matte display, 16 GB ram, 2 hard drives, quad core cpu (8 hyperthreads) and Intel Iris Pro gfx (> Intel HD 5000). https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/galu1 https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/galu1
    - akurtzhs 13y ago
      Thanks for linking that - that's an amazing machine for the quoted price. I really wish Lenovo made something like this with a Thinkpad-style keyboard and pointer. Everything else seems perfect, assuming battery life and decent build quality. Two hard drives is a little misleading - it's a tiny mSATA drive slot plus a regular SATA slot.
      - DuskStar 13y ago
        Right, but that's still enough to run a boot SSD + HDD setup. I don't need 2 HDDs, and I'd expect most developers to feel the same.
    - cjpartridge 13y ago
      Wow, thanks for the link, I was close to buying a X1 Carbon or MBA - but this looks too good to pass up!
      - pyre 13y ago
        Looks interesting, but there are no estimated battery life specs.
        benjamincburns 13y ago
        Battery life is about the least meaningful spec there is, and it's insanely difficult to calculate. That and it's a small company so I'd imagine that'll just open up liability. They do list the battery as 53.28Wh however. Let's do some back-of-the-envelope. At 2.0GHz the 4750HQ TDP is 47W. Chipset TDP is 2.7W. SSDs are damn near negligible (typically a few mW idle, less than 1W when active, but they sleep/wake very very fast so they're mostly always idle). I couldn't find a datasheet on their panel, so I'm going to guess the display consumes around 5W at full brightness. RAM maxed out will cost around 3-6W. Assuming awful power management (or just running the thing full bore), you're looking at a worst case of somewhere around 45m to 1h. Assuming decent power management (5W idle with screen on at less than full brightness) and occasional spikes due to light use you're looking at 8-10h, or 6-8h just to be safe if I was way off about the display. If you're really worried about it, the extra battery is very well priced at $95. Edit: Nevermind - see a comment above that lists 3-4h of battery life.
        pyre 13y ago
        I realize that the estimates aren't hard numbers, but if (e.g.) Apple estimates that the MacBook Air has 11 hours of battery life, I expect not to generally get 1 hour of battery life.
    - benjamincburns 13y ago
      I see this is your first comment. You're getting off to a great start, because I can't tell you how awesomely helpful that link is. Back in December I went on a quest to find the perfect laptop. I often do embedded stuff that takes me outside. That, and sometimes I just look outside and say "wait, why am I in here again? Park!" I wanted something with good Linux support that could run a VM or two, have a long battery life, and be readable outdoors. I spent an embarrassing number of hours looking. In the end it came down to the Samsung Series 9 or the 13" rMBP. The rMBP despite its glossiness is mostly readable outdoors on full brightness, and I liked its ergonomics better. Do you by any chance work for system76? If not, do you at least own one of their laptops? Can you speak to build quality, battery life, sunlight readability, or keyboard ergonomics?
      - etioyuahgdhjdkg 13y ago
        I ordered one of these things the other day, after quite a bit of research. Basically, the "catch" with these laptops is an abysmal 3-4 hour battery life. If you're never more than 4 hours away from an outlet, it's perfect for development.
        benjamincburns 13y ago
        Have you verified that yet? What setup did you choose?
        etioyuahgdhjdkg 13y ago
        I got the galago pro ultrabook. Had a back-and-forth with a guy on their engineering team and he said approximately "a solid 3 hours, generally 3-3.5 hours. But dealing with pre-release machines, not the ones that will be actually shipped out. Hopefully this will be higher with the actual ones." The one I ordered has a 240 GB intel SSD and 16 GB of RAM, but I don't think that really matters. It's the power-hungry Iris and the really nice display that kill it.
    - Bud 13y ago
      But nobody wants 1080p. That's not a high-DPI screen, and it's also the wrong aspect ratio.

I came here to say just that. I'm a retina MBP owner. I'd dump it in a heartbeat for something powerful with long battery life, high DPI matte screen, and decent enough Ubuntu support. Are manufacturers missing out, or are we just a really tiny market?

kleiba 13y ago
Seconded. If any manufacturer intends to give a "developer notebook" a go, a matte screen would be the first thing on my wish list.
- darwinism 13y ago
  System76 just launched a Linux friendly Ultrabook with 1080p IPS matte display, 16 GB ram, 2 hard drives, quad core cpu (8 hyperthreads) and Intel Iris Pro gfx (> Intel HD 5000). https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/galu1 https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/galu1
  - akurtzhs 13y ago
    Thanks for linking that - that's an amazing machine for the quoted price. I really wish Lenovo made something like this with a Thinkpad-style keyboard and pointer. Everything else seems perfect, assuming battery life and decent build quality. Two hard drives is a little misleading - it's a tiny mSATA drive slot plus a regular SATA slot.
    - DuskStar 13y ago
      Right, but that's still enough to run a boot SSD + HDD setup. I don't need 2 HDDs, and I'd expect most developers to feel the same.
  - cjpartridge 13y ago
    Wow, thanks for the link, I was close to buying a X1 Carbon or MBA - but this looks too good to pass up!
    - pyre 13y ago
      Looks interesting, but there are no estimated battery life specs.
      - benjamincburns 13y ago
        Battery life is about the least meaningful spec there is, and it's insanely difficult to calculate. That and it's a small company so I'd imagine that'll just open up liability. They do list the battery as 53.28Wh however. Let's do some back-of-the-envelope. At 2.0GHz the 4750HQ TDP is 47W. Chipset TDP is 2.7W. SSDs are damn near negligible (typically a few mW idle, less than 1W when active, but they sleep/wake very very fast so they're mostly always idle). I couldn't find a datasheet on their panel, so I'm going to guess the display consumes around 5W at full brightness. RAM maxed out will cost around 3-6W. Assuming awful power management (or just running the thing full bore), you're looking at a worst case of somewhere around 45m to 1h. Assuming decent power management (5W idle with screen on at less than full brightness) and occasional spikes due to light use you're looking at 8-10h, or 6-8h just to be safe if I was way off about the display. If you're really worried about it, the extra battery is very well priced at $95. Edit: Nevermind - see a comment above that lists 3-4h of battery life.
        pyre 13y ago
        I realize that the estimates aren't hard numbers, but if (e.g.) Apple estimates that the MacBook Air has 11 hours of battery life, I expect not to generally get 1 hour of battery life.
  - benjamincburns 13y ago
    I see this is your first comment. You're getting off to a great start, because I can't tell you how awesomely helpful that link is. Back in December I went on a quest to find the perfect laptop. I often do embedded stuff that takes me outside. That, and sometimes I just look outside and say "wait, why am I in here again? Park!" I wanted something with good Linux support that could run a VM or two, have a long battery life, and be readable outdoors. I spent an embarrassing number of hours looking. In the end it came down to the Samsung Series 9 or the 13" rMBP. The rMBP despite its glossiness is mostly readable outdoors on full brightness, and I liked its ergonomics better. Do you by any chance work for system76? If not, do you at least own one of their laptops? Can you speak to build quality, battery life, sunlight readability, or keyboard ergonomics?
    - etioyuahgdhjdkg 13y ago
      I ordered one of these things the other day, after quite a bit of research. Basically, the "catch" with these laptops is an abysmal 3-4 hour battery life. If you're never more than 4 hours away from an outlet, it's perfect for development.
      - benjamincburns 13y ago
        Have you verified that yet? What setup did you choose?
        etioyuahgdhjdkg 13y ago
        I got the galago pro ultrabook. Had a back-and-forth with a guy on their engineering team and he said approximately "a solid 3 hours, generally 3-3.5 hours. But dealing with pre-release machines, not the ones that will be actually shipped out. Hopefully this will be higher with the actual ones." The one I ordered has a 240 GB intel SSD and 16 GB of RAM, but I don't think that really matters. It's the power-hungry Iris and the really nice display that kill it.
  - Bud 13y ago
    But nobody wants 1080p. That's not a high-DPI screen, and it's also the wrong aspect ratio.