Ask HN: Reasonable dev laptop?
So my 2015 Retina MacBook Pro just broke. My fault, my shoddily mounted monitor fell over and hit the laptop, breaking the screen. As I probably won't qualify for the 'Staingate' replacements, footing $600+ for a display replacement is just a bit too much. I'm also looking to move away from Apple products.
I'm looking for a reasonable laptop to buy, not looking for the latest specs, just one that can run Ubuntu, have a long battery life (>6 hours preferably), and can handle Modern web browsing (webapps and stuff). Preferably not too heavy to lug around. I'm doing light dev work on Django and trying to learn React/Angular.
I'm kinda interested in getting older thinkpads (t430/x230s) but concerned on the battery life part. If any of you have any suggestions, it would be great.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 64.1 ms ] threadhttps://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/Thi...
EDIT: scratch that, was probably a scam. Got one with i5, 500GB HDD, 8GB RAM with integrated 520HD graphics for around US$500. But the point on the drivers still stands. How is it working and how's the battery life?
Battery life is good, but nothing awesome due to the 1080p screen. I think I get 5-7 hours depending on task. If you want to go all in on battery life, get the X220/X230 with the extended battery and 768p screen. I got ~9.5 hrs with this setup.
Mine didn't come with Optimus (You DON'T want a linux laptop with Optimus).
If possible, I'd check them out yourself. Personally, I found Dell trackpads better and larger than Thinkpad's, but neither is a match to Apple's (I have no use for the trackpoint on Thinkpads). Thinkpads are also praised for their keyboards, but I've found Dell keyboards work better for me. This is highly subjective; some devs have reported pain after using Dell keyboards. Last time I checked, Thinkpad T460/470 notebooks are equipped with (sub-par IMHO) 14" displays which would be a deal breaker for me, though I guess you can order better ones at least on their X1 (for a price, though).
I wonder if it's the right time to buy a new laptop that'll last. The general trend seems to be getting more and more cores in the desktop computers, whereas in laptops the most you can get is a 6-core. Which again, for VMs is a bit limited for my use case.
Couldn't be happier.
Got a 16 GB, i7, 512 GB NVMe SSD (no NVidia).
Brilliant laptop, fantastic screen, keyboard and the trackpad is very good - although I gotta hand it over to Apple, they do a great trackpad.
What surprised me most of all is battery life. I usually get in to work at 8 AM and by 12 PM it still running (about 10% or so left). I do have a few things running:
- postgres, redis, elastic search and kibana on Docker containers - Terminator, VSCode, Firefox and Slack open all the time - From time to time rails and rspec (guard)
Couldn't recommend it more. I'm running Arch + i3.
Good luck
The greatest thing about the latest Lenovo's and the Dell's is how good Linux support is these days.
If you really, really want to use Linux and is worried about peripherals, I might suggest you look into system76 - dedicated Linux laptops with a great distro (Ubuntu-based, named Pop OS) to match.
They fixed the sleep issue with a BIOS update. The only remaining issue is aggressive throttling of the CPU, which is fixed with this: https://github.com/erpalma/lenovo-throttling-fix
Apple laptops range among the most expensive one but if you want similar quality from other vendors you typically have to pay a similar price, too.
If you just want to move away from Apple in terms of software (though I personally think that doesn't really make sense from a development perspective) you could install Linux on the MacBook Pro as well.
Just have to zoom out these trendy websites who think it's "in" to design a layout with 40px font size for copy and everything fits well in Firefox.
Oh and if you're really adventurous, the x220 and x230 make for pretty good hackintoshes, I hear. Plus they have matte displays.
I used to work with the laptop everyday. The density is not up to today's standards, and it never was.
Lenovo puts sub-standard displays in their laptops, even the high-end models haven't improved in brightness in many configurations available though retailers.
I guess it's fine for me because I spent most of my time in the terminal so no GUI with tons of icons but I can see how it could be a problem for other workflows.
Considering the battery life, my observation is that the older the laptop line, the worse the battery life. They used to do good keyboards before, maybe good chassis, but the batteries were small and heavy. Refurbished Thinkpad P52(s), new P1, X1 are all good choices if you're nostalgic for that "red dot".
However I recently had a chance to use a Huawei Matebook X Pro, and it's a beautiful machine, build quality on par with Surface with much more reasonable pricing. Ubuntu or Manjaro run well on it.
I replaced the ssd because the 180gb intel that came with it has issues with heavy writes and it freezes. In a very Applesque way, Lenovo and intel always ignored the problem, even more so that most of these machines' leases are over and not under warranty anymore. Ssds are cheap these days so not too bad.
Anything else for that laptop is very affordable. Spare parts are plentiful, I got two docking stations with 2x HDMI and 2x dvi for 30$. A genuine charger is 20$. A new keyboard is around 40$ (you can install a backlit one if you want.) It does usb3. The WiFi is slow in my opinion (802.11n) and you can't upgrade to ac without either installing coreboot or buying a modded bios from the bios mods forum (for the price of a 10 USD donation, I'm told.) the intel me can be fully disabled on that machine with me_cleaner (ie reduced to a few dozen kb instead of the original 7mb.)
It's lightweight, very sturdy (magnesium cage), fully repairable (service manual freely available), you don't need anything else than a Philips screw driver to completely disassemble the machine and replace any given part. The only downside is that the to left corner is weak and is broken on most of these, but it's not really an issue if you use the notch or right corner to open and close the machine instead.
It can be had in good condition for 300-400$ and takes up to 16gb of ram (haven't tried 32gb, don't know if it would work) and should last you quite a while.
Also Dell has decent Latitude and Precision lines
System76 is pulling up some great work, I would not recommend the GalagoPro just yet as the battery life won't be great, but the Oryx Pro and Gazelle looks great
Read more in this thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18205885
I prefer my x270 in everything except keyboard..
Ubuntu works perfectly on both
Anecdote: I was able to find one of the last trustworthy MBP Retina (Mid 2015) for $1996. I had the late 2013 (no intention to change it) but the extra RAM is a nice upgrade and at the same time the old model could go to my mom. She loves it, and I'm super happy with mine.