5 ms·

The Perfect Developer Laptop

3 points by fekberg 13y ago

nodata 13y ago
There is something fishy about this article. He starts by saying: > At least 10 hours of battery as I was imagining myself taking 10 hour+ flights every month and also taking the laptop everywhere without a charger. Then he finds his "perfect laptop" from a company I've never heard of, and writes: > Battery life is only rumoured to be 3.5 to 4 hours – haven’t tried it without charging it for that long Strange.
- fekberg 13y ago
  What's fishy about it? I've only used it connected to the wall so far, my co-worker had his running for 3.5 hours and the forum thread linked in the bottom of the article has lots of people running it for 3.5 to 4 hours. I just haven't had a change to test the battery that well yet. Also, "I was imagining myself taking 10 hour+ flights" was a joke as I figured I wouldn't need that much battery so I let go of that requirement.
  - nodata 13y ago
    If a ten hour battery life was a requirement, why choose not test it? Why go to the trouble of plugging the cable into the wall?
    - fekberg 13y ago
      It was a requirement from the start, but then I decided to not care about battery life at all as it opened up for lots of more alternatives like this one, Alienware, etc. But you are right, I should test that before I actually rely on it having lots of battery. Will do tomorrow and update the article with my results. Thanks for reading
    - fekberg 13y ago
      Update: Normal work drained the battery to 10% in a little over 2 hours. This included having Visual Studio running, 10+ browser tabs, some chat Windows, PowerPoint, PowerShell, Steam downloading stuff, LINQPad
lolsal 13y ago
This is how I read this blog post: I am getting a new laptop, hooray! My requirements for the perfect laptop are: 1. Thing 2. Thing 2 3. Thing 3 4. Thing 4 In the end I decided I don't need things 2, 3 or 4 and just bought a laptop. --- You tried just about the lowest end Apple laptop and compared it to a custom built laptop. The blog post didn't explain why other brands/models were discounted. I also find it strange that a requirement of '10 hours of battery life' made the initial list of requirements and was then dropped, but something like "runs Windows well, which I need because of Camtasia" didn't factor into the equation.
- fekberg 13y ago
  > "Just bought a laptop" That's not really true, when I started looking I had no idea I could configure the hardware in a laptop like this. For some reason I imagined touch and 10 hour battery life being the most important thing and when I couldn't get that I decided to let go of the touch requirement - that is when I got the MacBook Air. It was suppose to be really good as it had the newer Haswell i7, sure it runs Windows OK but the drivers are crap. I was unhappy with the purchase and decided that I wanted to look outside the scope of ultrabooks but still not get a 4KG beast as that had been my previous device and it was just a hassle to take anywhere at all. I did consider other laptops, like AlienWare but when I went to try one out I felt it was too heavy and bulky. > "runs Windows well" All laptops should. Why even bother having that in the requirements?

3 points by fekberg 13y ago

There is something fishy about this article. He starts by saying: > At least 10 hours of battery as I was imagining myself taking 10 hour+ flights every month and also taking the laptop everywhere without a charger. Then he finds his "perfect laptop" from a company I've never heard of, and writes: > Battery life is only rumoured to be 3.5 to 4 hours – haven’t tried it without charging it for that long Strange.

fekberg 13y ago
What's fishy about it? I've only used it connected to the wall so far, my co-worker had his running for 3.5 hours and the forum thread linked in the bottom of the article has lots of people running it for 3.5 to 4 hours. I just haven't had a change to test the battery that well yet. Also, "I was imagining myself taking 10 hour+ flights" was a joke as I figured I wouldn't need that much battery so I let go of that requirement.
- nodata 13y ago
  If a ten hour battery life was a requirement, why choose not test it? Why go to the trouble of plugging the cable into the wall?
  - fekberg 13y ago
    It was a requirement from the start, but then I decided to not care about battery life at all as it opened up for lots of more alternatives like this one, Alienware, etc. But you are right, I should test that before I actually rely on it having lots of battery. Will do tomorrow and update the article with my results. Thanks for reading
  - fekberg 13y ago
    Update: Normal work drained the battery to 10% in a little over 2 hours. This included having Visual Studio running, 10+ browser tabs, some chat Windows, PowerPoint, PowerShell, Steam downloading stuff, LINQPad

lolsal 13y ago

This is how I read this blog post: I am getting a new laptop, hooray! My requirements for the perfect laptop are: 1. Thing 2. Thing 2 3. Thing 3 4. Thing 4 In the end I decided I don't need things 2, 3 or 4 and just bought a laptop. --- You tried just about the lowest end Apple laptop and compared it to a custom built laptop. The blog post didn't explain why other brands/models were discounted. I also find it strange that a requirement of '10 hours of battery life' made the initial list of requirements and was then dropped, but something like "runs Windows well, which I need because of Camtasia" didn't factor into the equation.

fekberg 13y ago
> "Just bought a laptop" That's not really true, when I started looking I had no idea I could configure the hardware in a laptop like this. For some reason I imagined touch and 10 hour battery life being the most important thing and when I couldn't get that I decided to let go of the touch requirement - that is when I got the MacBook Air. It was suppose to be really good as it had the newer Haswell i7, sure it runs Windows OK but the drivers are crap. I was unhappy with the purchase and decided that I wanted to look outside the scope of ultrabooks but still not get a 4KG beast as that had been my previous device and it was just a hassle to take anywhere at all. I did consider other laptops, like AlienWare but when I went to try one out I felt it was too heavy and bulky. > "runs Windows well" All laptops should. Why even bother having that in the requirements?