Ask HN: Is there a developer laptop that does not suck and is not a Mac in 2022?
Background: I am sick of Apple's terrible customer support in my country. The most recent case was that of my friend who upgraded to a 14 inch Macbook Pro that stopped booting in 7 days. Since there is no return option in 30 days like in other geographies, he took it to Apple's authorised service centre (there are no Apple owned service centres in my country), and they put a big scratch right across the Apple logo. To add to this, Apple's customer support final response after more than a week of wasting his time was they would not be able to replace the display even when my friend sent clear voice recordings of the service centre employees accepting their mistake. He had to take the help of the local police who went with him to the shop to get a written statement that they would be replacing the display too along with the mainboard to fix the primary issue of dead laptop.
I have had my own horror stories in the past 10 years and I do not want to pay another dime to Apple for such pathetic treatment even under warranty.
Are there any other options for someone like me?
537 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 97.5 ms ] threadI hear Lenovo is making good stuff though. We’ll see how that goes.
If it isn't, why do some controversial comments get into a lighter font?
Are you joking?
Which means that, when the parent poster started using this site, these Javascript-only thread collapsing buttons didn't exist (I took a quick look at archive.org to confirm). Since these buttons are so subtle, it is plausible that the parent poster didn't notice when they appeared.
Dell is good, in cycles. I only every bought in the bad years. If I wasn't on an Apple Mac I'd be on a thinkpad, or a chrome book at this point: run in VMs in the cloud, minimise dependency on the desktop.
I am also having issues with my current System76 suddenly deciding not to detect my second monitor. Just a bad experience overall, though on this particular point, the flaw is easily Ubuntu's and not System76's.
I really like a Matt screen and these have them. They’re rebranded Clevo machines but I found them to be decent quality. I had to replace a fan In the older one which I was able to do (we have a husky…..). They’re expandable and fast enough. Depending on the model some have a descrete gpu.
You can even use the vscode-server thing made by gitpods that allows you to use vscode in a normal browser; but the environment feels weird because those localhost ports you're used to opening are not open of course.
It's not for everyone, but you are paying for your development environment either way (upfront by buying powerful notebook, or as-you-go by renting cloud instance). Seems fine as long as it is conscious choice.
If you travel a lot and have to work, you need mobility, but possibly not as much as you think. If compact wireless input devices and a hotel TV, borrowed screen or correctly configured tablet may be adequate, then you only need a compute box not a full laptop and you can consider higher end ARM boards and a purchased or custom battery bank.
If you don't have a huge travel requirement, you may be better off buying two desktops than one laptop as they are far cheaper, easier to maintain/repair, provide better input devices, better and far more upgradable. Carry your data around on a USB stick or SSD.
Both of these are pricy machines, but I'm really satisfied with them.
Best purchase of my developer career.
17 inch, backlit keyboard, 10 key numpad, great battery, trackpad equal or better to Mac, under 3 pounds, usb c charging.
The full package.
(Bonus: put MS PowerToys on it and remap the keyboard layout to your liking)
I use a NUC11PAHi7, which is basically a Tiger Lake-UP3 mobile chipset minus a display.
Additionally, the Dell Precision line (the business workstation-replacement line) is exceptional for development, but those can be as expensive as equivalent MacBooks. Stay away from Dell's pure consumer line: the build quality is absolutely awful.
The constant noise makes it really difficult to use these machines for any kind of focused work.
Programmers want Thinkpad T or P.
And why marketing types should not care about comfort / noise? Is this a "Real men [...]" thing?
It also coincided with some _terrible_ decisions that Lenovo made as a half-assed response to the touch bar, among other things. The "touch bar" was essentially just backlit capacitive buttons hardcoded to a couple different functions, they nerfed the red mouse pointer thing in the middle to the point that it was too squishy to use with any accuracy; and they merged the click buttons into the touchpad and used terrible software heuristics to try and figure out what you wanted. Oh, and it would wake up and burn its battery out for no reason.
BUT I played with a 5th-ish gen a couple years later, and they'd rolled everything back. The owner really liked it, I expect in large part because Intel tocked back to a CPU that wasn't overheating by design.
On paper, they're spec'd out pretty well, but if you need the "real juice" I still know people that swear by their older T series. But I don't know how much the newer ones have sacrificed the vision.
I remember hearing activity on a Pentium II laptop (which had a Silicon Graphics graphics card) and I think on a Pentium II tower with a Voodoo 2 card too, years ago. The noise was quite obvious to me, it was more similar to the Coil Whine noise from a GPU recorded by LTT [2]
I hope I'm not cursing you if you hadn't noticed until now.
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1730423
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP73edpQwgc
We got one of the first batches of 11th gen models of the Precision. The glue around the edge of my display wasn't done correctly and it was falling apart. The top layer of my keyboard has also popped off in various spots and is currently sitting warped on my desk. Can't say the QA is very good.
Yes, only 8Gb of RAM but they are offering Chromebooks with twice that amount, which is enough for anyone, right?!?
I do not need sound but the audio on my Lenovo "Flex 5" is awesome. No complaints about the keyboard, trackpad or screen.
Fantastic that my Chromebook is, it is only with an 11th gen CPU, and a mere i5. I have only discovered it is good for development out of laziness, the Chromebook is in the front room and not in the study. I start researching something whilst taking a break and, with that terminal window so close by, I give things a go.
I have another recommendation - Huawei. The trick is to buy from their website and not via a retailer. This is because there will be a deal where you might get a monitor or other accessory bundled in.
I have the Huawei ultrabook from 2020 (Matebook X) and that has a low power CPU and is not my development machine. It is my official 'research' machine. I have this directly connected with a Thunderbolt cable to a Huawei Matebook 16s 2022 edition. This has the 12th gen i7 with many cores and plenty of performance for running whatever you want.
The thunderbolt networking and Barrier/Synergy means that I have access to my files and screens from either machine at speeds that make wifi feel like dial up networking. There is much to recommend about this arrangement, particularly since the high speed network drops down to wifi if the cable is unplugged. I also have the DNS rigged so that both machines 'resolve' globally, with my files available on whatever network is available.
Regarding the Huawei Matebook 16s, it has a 16" 3:2 display with 2520 pixels across. This means I can run 1:1 pixels with no scaling and still be able to work with my IDE effectively. As mentioned, I have my 'research' machine (Matebook X) to do browsing and testing, with magic keyboard/mouse sharing thanks to Barrier. Even though I am using the 'development' machine for commpilation, running DBs and the IDE, the sleeker Matebook X is the device I am physically using.
Sometimes reviewers place importance on features that do not matter to the developer. All laptops are a design compromise and you take your choices. I don't play games or wish to be tempted by gaming. Right now I don't do anything in 3D so I needed a GPU as much as a fish needs a bicycle. I also did not want the i9 version which wants 135W of USB-C power. The single core speed was not 'better'. Plus throttling could happen.
Anyway, the Huawei Matebook 16s has a gorgeous screen for programming, but the gamer or content creator might complain about the refresh/latency/colours. I don't care, I just want pixels that are abundant. The aluminium case is not Dell creaky plastic with a rocket engine roaring away. The keyboard/trackpad are great but the speakers are not. I am happy with that because I really did not buy the machine for games/Netflix/video editing or anything else where I 'need' something as good as Lenovo's MaxxAudio(r).
YMMV, I have been given many XPS machines over the years, none of which I have 'bonded with'. Although Lenovo is my goto brand, for absolute quality, bang per buck and a nice change, I can't recommend Huawei highly enough. Ubuntu worked perfectly out the box on the Matebook X and on the 12th gen 16s I had to disable suspend, because it wasn't waking up. Actually I did not want the machine going to sleep anyway, so I have not investigated further.
A lot of shade has been thrown Huawei's way over the years. I just want to write my best code and I chuckle at the thought of those senile politicians trying to tell me what phone/computer I have.
eSATA never seemed to take off for that application, and on paper usb-c should be pretty good!
There was nothing online about how to do this. I just had to plug the Thunderbolt 4 cable in and it worked perfectly. No instructions needed, it configured itself and I was instantly in a new world of network file speeds.
I use Barrier KVM too.
https://www.msi.com/Business-Productivity
I have the MSI Prestige 15 and it has been very reliable and a pleasure to work with.
I've had a Lenovo initially, but had all these problems with the web camera. It was a decent computer, but the camera is quite essential in this age of remote / hybrid work arrangements.