
Ask HN: Ultrabook for programming? - drKarl
I was considering buying an Ultrabook for a long trip. I don&#x27;t want to make a big investment, so something like a Surface Pro is too expensive, but I would like to be able to use it both as a tablet and as a desktop while travelling, with a keyboard.<p>I have found 2 options with similar specs and prices, the Chiwi Hi10 (with variants, Plus, Pro), and the Teclast x98 (with variants Plus, Pro).<p>Both have a decent 4 core Cherry Trail Z8300 CPU, 4Gb of RAM, 64 Gb of ROM, a decent screen (1080p Hi10 and Retina-level the Teclast). Both dual-boot Android and Windows 10 (and probably you can install Linux on both).<p>The Hi10 has a dock for a keyboard, and 2 full size USB ports, and is 10.1&quot;, while the Teclast has a better battery life, better screen resolution and is 9.7&quot;.<p>They both seem to have specs that in my opinion would be capable for programming. My question is, would they be good enough for programming? Is it possible to install any desktop app on Windows 10 in a tablet, i.e. IntelliJ IDEA? Is it possible to enable WPS (Windows Subsystem for Linux, aka Bash on Ubuntu on Windows) on Windows 10 in a tablet?<p>Also there is a version of the Hi10, the Hi10 Plus, which is slightly bigger (10.8&quot;) has better battery and screen resolution and comes with RemixOS instead of Android. Can you install any Android application on RemixOS?
======
johngalt
Considering your goals and price range. I'd recommend shopping the refurb
market. Specifically business laptops that are off lease. Bigcorp IT
departments tend to cycle their hardware every 3-4 years and flood the market
with used cheap/good used laptops. They won't be 'ultrabooks' but they will be
cheap, reliable and easy to maintain.

Something like a Dell E6430 would be a good bet.

[https://www.dellrefurbished.com/laptops/dell-
latitude-e6430-...](https://www.dellrefurbished.com/laptops/dell-
latitude-e6430-30101.html)?

Keep in mind that raw stats/specs aren't everything. I've seen countless
people held up by hardware issues that have nothing to do with the speed of
the processor.

~~~
jpalomaki
I second this opinion. There are for example lots of people who are happy with
older Lenovo models. Performance wise you don't need to loose that much, since
the Intel CPUs are not getting that much faster. Pick up some good model (for
example on Lenovo side look at X2x0 or the T4x0 (where x=2,3,4,5,6) models)
and swap HDD with some reasonably priced SSD and put in max memory.

~~~
gamache
I just bought a 2015 Thinkpad T450 from eBay (I do mean "just bought", it
hasn't even arrived yet). Beware the T440 and earlier because they max out at
8GB RAM. I got a T450 with an i7 processor and 8GB RAM expandable to 32GB, and
it came in under $500 including the fancy Thinkpad dock.

In general, nothing runs Linux quite like Last Year's Model.

~~~
beryleo
It's not quite true that T440 and earlier max out at 8GB RAM - I'm writing
this from a T430s w/ 16GB RAM. A T430 can also go to 16GB, and a T440s can go
to 12 GB.

~~~
gamache
That doesn't agree with the docs I read. But since I am reading your post, I
guess the docs could use an update. :)

------
eustar
I recently bought the Xiaomi Mi Air 12.

tl;dr, it's the best ultrabook/notebook I've ever had and run Arch on it.

I was looking for a light notebook also for programming for a long, long time
(and I wanted this time Linux because of tiling window managers like i3). I
finally got this Chinese model and what can I say, inside it's all Intel
(Wifi, BT), Arch works flawlessly, touchpad is a glass trackpad and is for a
non-Macbook just great, smooth and responsive and with Synaptics generic Linux
driver you can really configure every tiny piece. I like the keyboard very
much and the 176ppi screen is fantastic. It's also fast for a passive cooled
device (it has a Skylake m3), and I get with Arch and 'powertop --autotune'
easily 11 (!) hours surfing, sshing and coding. Only drawback it the 4GB RAM
but it still works surprisingly well with the 4GB. And it has two SSD slots
and one is even with the fast NVMe protocol. There's also a 13 inch model with
8GB and an i5 but way less battery time and it's slightly heavier (I always
wanted a real ultrabook which also stays cool).

I got it directly from a Chinese shop for €450 in an xmas sale. I think now
it's around €530.

However, it was so hard to find a notebook in this space. I you want a really
light but somewhat powerful notebook you look at the Thinkpad X1C which is in
some countries priced ok but in many, especially Europe super expensive (as
the X260). But the X1 is still a great piece of hardware and as light as the
Xiaomi at 14". Then we have the Macbook which is light, powerful but super
expensive and runs well with macOS and Windows but people have mixed
experiences when running Linux on that device. I looked also at HP (not really
bad but also not exciting, the last gen Envy 13 is ok though), Acer have some
new light ones but they are expensive and ASUS has the light Zenbook series
which is ok but not that cheap.

So considering that this was Xiaomi first gig in the notebook space they did
it quite well.

~~~
nextos
Is it all Intel? That's excellent!

I presume you can get every component into powersaving states (which you can
monitor with powertop).

Tricky question, do you get battery discharge events via ACPI (run acpid, and
unplug)? That's the gold standard for uber good Linux support, and allows for
neat udev rules to be written.

What material are keycaps made of?

~~~
eustar
> Is it all Intel? That's excellent!

Yes.

> Tricky question, do you get battery discharge events via ACPI (run acpid,
> and unplug)?

I got this:

    
    
      $ acpi // plugged in
      Battery 0: Unknown, 100%
      $ acpi // unplugged
      Battery 0: Discharging, 99%, 83:38:49 remaining
    

> What material are keycaps made of?

Plastic.

Edit: Just saw that you meant acpid. With acpid nothing happened:

    
    
      $ acpi
      $ acpi -f // to run in foreground
      $
    

Is this normal? I checked also the dir where acpid should save its event file
(/proc/acpi/events) but there was nothing.

However, suspend on lid close and wakeup on lid open works very good and fast
(much faster than with the prior windows installation, tried with i3). I don't
know if this is related to the acpi events.

~~~
nextos
Thanks for checking this. Very few laptops support this, and its badly
documented. But it's IMHO the difference between good and superb Linux
support.

Run sudo acpid, will start the daemon in the background.

Then run acpi_listen. It will block waiting for events. E.g. if you press
media keys, un/plug the adapter, etc you should start seeing events. One per
line.

Just leave it running on battery for a while. Hopefully it has events at 1% or
5% discharge intervals. Or at least for critical battery levels, when you
cross the 10% or 5% level. Emergency thresholds can be usually controlled
through a variable in sysfs.

These events are needed to write udev rules that get fired by the kernel.
Thanks!

~~~
eustar
Ok, thanks for the instructions! It seems to work, this time I did 'sudo
acpid' and 'acpi_listen' gave me following output (scroll the code field below
to the right in case my comments there are hidden):

    
    
      // Notebook was at the beginning unplugged
    
      $ acpi_listen
      ^[[14~^[[15~^[[20~ac_adapter ACPI0003:00 00000000 00000001 // I pressed three media keys and plugged in the power adapter
      battery PNP0C0A:00 00000080 00000001
      battery PNP0C0A:00 00000081 00000001
      processor LNXCPU:00 00000080 00000005
      processor LNXCPU:01 00000080 00000005
      processor LNXCPU:02 00000080 00000005
      processor LNXCPU:03 00000080 00000005
      processor LNXCPU:00 00000081 00000000
      processor LNXCPU:01 00000081 00000000
      processor LNXCPU:02 00000081 00000000
      processor LNXCPU:03 00000081 00000000
      ac_adapter ACPI0003:00 00000000 00000000 // unplugged the power adapter again
      battery PNP0C0A:00 00000080 00000001
      battery PNP0C0A:00 00000081 00000001
      processor LNXCPU:00 00000081 00000000
      processor LNXCPU:01 00000081 00000000
      processor LNXCPU:02 00000081 00000000
      processor LNXCPU:03 00000081 00000000
      ^C
    

I'll try this at lower battery levels again tomorrow (since the battery is
charged now).

But it seems that the system emits charge and discharge acpi events.

~~~
nextos
Great! It'd be superb to confirm the laptop ACPI emits discharge events every
once in a while, or when a threshold level is reached. Then you can write
really neat udev rules.

Plug n unplug events are more common. Battery ones are quite infrequent.

------
tronje
I'd recommend Lenovo laptops. I have a Thinkpad T460s, which is awesome. If
you really want the tablet/laptop hybrid, maybe a Thinkpad X1 Yoga, or
something from the 'regular' Yoga series will work for you. Yoga-series
laptops start at around $500, whereas the premium X1 Yoga starts at something
like $1.400 I believe.

Edit: Linux support on Lenovo laptops is pretty good overall, and if you're a
Windows person, they ship with that by default. If you're a student, they
offer discounts as well, I believe. I got mine from a local seller without an
OS and put Linux on it.

~~~
drKarl
I saw the Yoga, but I wanted to spend around $250 or less on this. I have 2
laptops and a desktop which are great for programming, but I wouldn't want to
risk bringing an expensive laptop to this trip, I want something portable and
cheap in case I get robbed or something, with the convenience of a tablet when
I just need to read an ebook or browse some webs, and the ability to do more
advanced stuff with a keyboard as a desktop, even programming.

~~~
blauditore
What about a second-hand Yoga 2 Pro? This should be in that price range now,
roughly.

I've been using this for a couple of years now and was quite happy. It's a
good trade-off between performance, weight and size in my opinion. Except some
minor inconveniences[1], my Linux/Windows dualboot setup works quite well.

Heads-up: If you consider it's successor, the Yoga 900, make sure you don't
get one of the series not supporting Linux (Google is your friend).

[1]: The biggest issue I've faced is inaccuracy of yellow colors on the
display; they're dark and pale. Lenovo published a BIOS fix for Windows, but
this doesn't work for Linux. However, if you don't plan to do any visual work
like photo editing or designing color palettes, you should be fine.

~~~
kyriakos
I still use a yoga 2 pro. It's a decent machine, with 8gb ram. If you can find
it at a low price definitely go for it.

------
RossBencina
It doesn't look like Cherry Trail Z8300 has VT-x (hardware virtualization) --
that's something you might want to consider.

Not a tablet, but I recently bought a factory reconditioned ASUS Zenbook 305CA
(8GB, M-5Y71 CPU) for a similar purpose. So far so good. It seemed to me to be
at the bottom end of the premium ultrabook market and about half the price of
a XPS 13, much cheaper than an X1. Also, Linux support is good.

Windows 10 memory management seems better than Windows 7. You might get away
with 4GB for some things but my gut feeling is that 8 would be preferable. My
Win 10 desktop is currently sitting at 7.3 GB with Visual Studio and a bunch
of Chrome tabs open.

------
Yizahi
I have a budget ultrabook based on Pentium N3700. Despite the name it is also
Atom core based and essentially just a tiny bit faster on paper than Z8300.
Same 4 Gb memory and HDD instead of flash drive. Windows 10 installed.

It boots up for a long long time. Win10 uses about 2.8Gb in idle state (which
is good and bad both). Any significant drive activity locks the system for
good - antivirus scan firing up, overloaded browser etc. Battery lifetime,
despite having a 6 Watt SoC with integrated video and DDR3 memory, is average
- maybe 4-5 hours top, doing nothing. My big old 15" laptop with 45 Watt cpu,
geforce video and other older stuff lasted for 3 hours while it was new.

I used Visual Studio on it - it is possible but painful. Building code takes
significantly slower, all actions are slow. But it can cope with MSVS, open
browser, books, iTunes and some other stuff simultaneously. Development in
lightweight editors should be way better.

64Gb of storage for Win10 with IDEs should be just barely enough and I would
not recommend that.

If possible you should put inside 128Gb or bigger ssd and more RAM, I plan to
do that at some point.

------
Somebodywashere
I'd recommend against the Teclast and Chuwi hardware. They're cheap and they
look like it works well (and spec wise it isn't too bad), but the user
experience isn't the best. If I recall correctly their touchpad experience is
pretty lacking (I think Chuwi one lacks the pressure sensitivity). While they
are Cherry Trail Z8300 Atom CPUs, they're mostly for lightweight usage, like
web browsing and youtube max. Also they should be using a brand of eMMC for
storage which doesn't have the best I/O rate.

It's nice as a gimmick, but not a great one for development. If you're on a
budget, I've seen fairly cheap but great second-hand hardware on ebay or
craigslist. Maybe check those out. A few years ago I bought a Thinkpad X240
for around 200 dollars, it was an i5 with 8 GB RAM and I bought my own SSD to
put in it. That laptop has been fairly solid for me especially with the
expanded battery pack I purchased.

------
scholia
_> decent 4 core Cherry Trail Z8300 CPU_

None of the Atom chips is decent for anything that requires heavy lifting. You
really need a Core processor.

 _> 4Gb of RAM, 64 Gb of ROM_

4GB is workable but 8GB is obviously better. However, I think you mean 64GB of
storage. This is usually in the form of an eMMC chip soldered to the
motherboard. The performance is similar to an ordinary SD card. It's nowhere
near the performance of an SSD.

If you want the tablet functions, your best bets are a second hand Surface Pro
2, one of the Lenovo Yoga's, or an Asus ZenBook -- they're all available with
SSDs and 8GB or more RAM.

The Surface Pro 2 keyboard isn't good and the touchpad is awful, but you can
get a nice portable Microsoft Bluetooth mouse instead.

If you can live without the tablet functions, go for a refurbished ex-
corporate ThinkPad X range with an i5 or i7, and fit your own SSD. The X220
was the last model with a "real" keyboard, but the newer keyboards are not too
bad. (Most of the alternatives are worse.)

Battery life isn't great but look for a model where you can buy a second
extended battery. I spent many years with a ThinkPad X and two extended
(9-cell) batteries and I could outlast anybody ;-)

I shared your doubts about Lenovo products but you should get over it: I've
bought three in the past 18 months and they've been fine. It's the highest-
volume PC manufacturer today and nobody else is competitive at the really
cheap end of the market. Also, you can often pick up sale bargains when it's
clearing out overstocks, which is what I've done.

~~~
tekklloneer
> This is usually in the form of an eMMC chip soldered to the motherboard.

This is something to watch out for, but hasn't been done commonly for years.
Those are the most likely parts to fail and manufacturers hate replacing an
entire mobo under warranty just to replace a flash chip.

~~~
scholia
Thanks for the info. What do they do instead?

------
mindrunner
Don't even bother with those Chinese tablets. They are passable for media
consumption, but absymal for anything else.

Buy something like a refurbished Dell Latitude series instead. Keyword here is
you said "long trip'. When you buy something that made a lot of tradeoffs to
achieve that price point, you are going to be frustrated.

~~~
akhilcacharya
I'm considering one for media consumption (Netflix, high-bitrate 1080p video)
- do any have good battery life?

~~~
kyriakos
There's a site and YouTube channel called techtablets.com, the guy does good
(and possibly unbiased) reviews of most of these tablets you should check it
out it will answer your question.

~~~
mindrunner
techtablets.com is great. In fact, I got my tablet based on his reviews. There
is a hidden subtext behind his reviews though. He already knows what he should
expect for the price he is paying. Thus, his reviews are based on what all
tablets in that price point offers.

I went in thinking that the specs on paper would turn out to be great value
for money. That was my biggest mistake.

~~~
kyriakos
Yeah that's true. You can say that his reviews are comparisons between devices
of similar caliber but you get to see some details that you wouldn't otherwise
expect e.g. If a USB port supports display out etc

------
amorphid
I was playing around with the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) a couple weeks
ago. I tried & failed to install two programs on WSL, Elixir & Debootstrap.
It's worth mentioning that WSL isn't intended to be 100% Linux compatible.

From the WSL FAQ ([https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/commandline/wsl/faq](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/commandline/wsl/faq)):

 _Can I run ALL Linux apps in WSL?_

 _No! WSL is a tool aimed at enabling users who need them to run Bash and core
Linux command-line tools on Windows._

 _WSL does not aim to support GUI desktops or applications (e.g. Gnome, KDE,
etc.)_

 _Also, even though you will be able to run many popular server applications
(e.g. Redis), we do not recommend WSL for server scenarios – Microsoft offers
a variety of solutions for running production Ubuntu workloads in Azure,
Hyper-V, and Docker._

~~~
yellowapple
Doesn't Erlang (and thus Elixir) have a native Windows version anyway? Or was
that just a test to try out WSL?

~~~
amorphid
Elixir does have a Windows installer. And yes, I was testing out the WSL.

------
analog31
I kind of had the same idea, some time ago, and got an Asus T100 series with
Bay Trail, 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of flash. So it's one generation behind the
devices you're talking about. The keyboard is detachable, so I can use the
thing as a tablet.

Battery life is great -- no problem charging it overnight and not worrying
about charging during the day.

In my case, I'm not a commercial developer, but I do "scientific programming"
using primarily Jupyter/Python. It works comfortably on the little Windows 10
machine, but is noticeably slower.

Perhaps a bigger issue than horsepower for me is the screen size and
attachment of the screen to the keyboard. Those things make it hard for me to
spend long amounts of time doing really detailed or complicated stuff.

You can always adapt to lower processing power by using simpler tools, but
trying to program on a 10" screen may end up being the main issue.

~~~
imaginenore
2GB of RAM is barely enough for browsing, let alone for comfortable
programming. 16GB should be the ideal minimum, 8Gb the absolute.

~~~
analog31
Browsing is the one thing that seems fine. How does the lack of memory
manifest itself? It may be due to my particular activities, but for more than
two decades I've been aware of what is considered the minimum RAM for a
developer system at any given time, and have gotten away with 1/2 to 1/4 of
that amount, typically due to starting out with a cheaper system and then
keeping it for a long time.

Using a cheaper system, if possible, is my "protection plan." I like to stay
within what I could afford to replace out-of-pocket if something happens like
the device gets stolen or I crash my bike.

But your point is well taken, and a developer should consider the typical
system for their own preferred environment, which is likely to be more
sophisticated than mine.

------
ptero
Consider getting a good used system and budget for a new battery -- battery
life on used laptops is a (loaded) coin toss. If you are price conscious you
will likely get a better value than from a cheaper new one.

On choosing the model for a portable -- IMO the #1 goal is to get one with
physical characteristics that work for you (size, weight, monitor, keyboard,
ability to be a tablet, etc.). CPU/Memory/storage is a very distant second. Go
to a store and hold many models in your hands. If you work next to other
techies, ask to see their travel computer option; ask for advice. This will
likely give you a lot of honest info and demos.

Extra 25% of CPU speed will get you little benefit if your ultrabook is not
comfortable for _you_ to work on.

~~~
CalRobert
I bought a used XPS 13 and put Ubuntu on it - I'm very happy with it. Dell
ships it with linux stock, so support is good, and the battery can be
replaced.

Might be worth a look?

------
fest
I own Chuwi Hi10 Plus with soft keyboard/case. It's a decent general purpose
tablet but I wouldn't use it for work unless I had no other option.

Reasons:

    
    
      * keyboard is too small for me (I find T430s keyboard much more comfortable);
      * Windows performance was terrible (again, compared to 2nd or 3rd gen i5).
    

I ended up removing windows and installing Cyanogenmod.

Oh, and the stock RemixOS software was buggy to the point where it was
unusable: crashes when using SD card and about 12 hours of standby time when
keyboard is attached. CM build fixes these issues.

Also, if you're wondering: Chuwi's active stylus is not worth it- it's laggy,
has bad palm rejection and needs too much pressure.

------
nmstoker
Is it a given you'll be wanting to develop whilst unconnected? (with travel
that could be likely but it depends on where you're going and how much you'd
make the effort to seek out WiFi)

If you are able to be connected, maybe consider going with a physically small
but well built machine but with specs inline with your budget and then remote
to a development PC (ie at home) that has the kind of ram and specs you need.
This will probably not be good for more GUI heavy development but command line
stuff would be largely okay. Clearly you mentioned some tools that are GUI
heavy, so YMMV, but thought it worth weighing up too

------
soyiuz
I recommend the Asus Flip Chromebook (running Debian under Crouton for
development) or a refurbished Lenovo X2xx series.

The ASUS is tiny for travel. The X2xx is larger, still pretty mobile, and
built like a tank (military spec moisture and dust resistance).

As a side-note, the ASUS died on me during my India trip due to moisture.

~~~
uniclaude
I second the lenovo recommendation. An X220t with 16gb ram and ssd would fit
your needs and budget for sure!

~~~
bluehazed
Not to mention the optional 2nd mSATA SSD!

------
grigio
Xiaomi Notebook Air 12.5 is a good ultrabook, it has a good build quality and
Linux support
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9xqJK2Hlb3U](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9xqJK2Hlb3U)

~~~
bostand
It is very hard to get hold of one in west for anything close to the original
price.

~~~
bpicolo
Seems to be purchasable on their site? [http://xiaomi-mi.com/notebooks/xiaomi-
mi-notebook-air-125-si...](http://xiaomi-mi.com/notebooks/xiaomi-mi-notebook-
air-125-silver/)

With this disclaimer: Please pay attention: both versions of Mi Notebook Air
will be run on Windows 10 Home Chinese Edition

~~~
eustar
This is no problem. You can get a Windows key on ebay or Amazon for 20 bucks
and reinstall an English version or as I did Linux (Arch).

~~~
bostand
What happens if you just reinstall a standard win10 image from usb?

~~~
eustar
As I wrote, super easy and no problem.

------
osullivj
You mention IntelliJ IDEA and Win10, so I'm guessing you want a Windows based
Java dev env. 4Gb RAM won't be enough for that. I use a 4 year old Samsung
Ultrabook: i5, 6Gb RAM, 500Gb disk, Win8. I'm building a cloud system with
Angular GUI, RethinkDB and Python/C++ servers using Visual C++ and PyCharm. I
can't run all that at once. Chrome, especially running dev tools, and PyCharm
are real memory hogs. I'd love to switch to a Surface Pro with 16Gb RAM, but
it's too expensive. My view: 8Gb RAM minimum for a dev env.

~~~
drKarl
Thanks, that's the kind of feedback I need. For developing while not
travelling I currently use a Macbook Pro 2015 with 16Gb of RAM and I'm happy
with it, and I've previously used Windows or Linux desktops and laptops, so
I'm OS agnostic, I can be productive with any OS (on Windows I'd just install
cygwin with console2, or cmder, or lately Babun which is a preconfigured
cygwin with a package manager).

I remember the time years ago when I was programming with 1Gb of RAM (that was
the normal for computers at the time) and it was a painful experience with
Eclipse and other tools. As computers evolved with Moore's Law, 2Gb was a
better experience and I think 4Gb was fine at the time. Then 8Gb should
definitely be good and 16Gb is plenty even to run VMs.

Thinking that it would not be for a full time developing environment, just to
be able to do some work while travelling in a long trip where I don't want to
bring an expensive laptop like a Macbook Pro, I thought 4Gb might be enough,
so your feedback is really appreciated.

~~~
syntheticnature
Also worth noting the Z8300 is an Atom device. Here's a comparison of the
processor in these devices vs. what I believe to be the lowest-end processor
from a 2015 MBP: [http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-5257U-vs-Intel-
Atom-x5...](http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-5257U-vs-Intel-
Atom-x5-x5-Z8300#performance)

------
LeonM
Since price is an issue, I'd consider a second hand or refurbished Asus UX
ultrabook. They are light, well constructed (aluminium unibody if i'm not
mistaken), have a high dpi displays and SSD comes standard. Linux support is
supposedly very good out of the box.

If you are planning to run IntelliJ (or other JetBrains IDE's for that matter)
I'd go for at least 8GB or memory though.

I wouldn't recommend running Android or other mobile oriented OS's for
development, getting the tools up and running will be a pain.

------
mergesortsalad
I've got a Dell XPS 12 and can only recommend getting an Ultrabook like this
one.

Yeah it is expensive and yeah it definitely had its quirks in the beginning.
However performance is crazy, I'll get easily 6hrs+ battery life on
programming workload (in energy saving mode of course).

I have no experience with passively cooled Core M processors or the cheapo
tablets you are currently considering, but having a full Intel CPU inside this
horse is definitely noticeable.

If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer

------
scotty79
I was considering Asus Zenbook 3. Very light, very powerful. Reasonably
priced. 12.5"

It's basically a MacBook but stronger and with decent file and window managers
and pc keyboard.

~~~
realusername
I can only say good things about the Zenbook. It also has an amazing linux
support, just one package to install for the two finger scrolling on Ubuntu
and that's it, no issues whatsoever.

------
aelmeleegy
I am currently using a retina Macbook Pro 2015, but I am getting to the point
of needing something with stronger specs and more configurability.

Here's what I think I'll, and let me know if you think that would work for
you, I am thinking of buying a slightly used lenovo X1 Carbon. So it would
cost less, but has great battery life and very decent specs, specially for
such a small footprint. I'll then install linux (probably Ubuntu) and run that
as a dev machine.

------
gens
"for programming" ...

I programmed just fine on a single core idk-what older celeron with 512MB of
RAM and a.. idk ~1000x700 resolution (and even all that was waaaay too much).
Next time say what you want to program, as for web and such programming you
_need_ a ton of RAM (and probably cpu) while some things/languages you can
program just fine with 256MB and a weak cpu.

Bdw cherry trail has a sound card in the cpu that doesn't yet work under
linux.

edit: ".. IntelliJ IDEA?" Requirements are clear:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IntelliJ_IDEA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IntelliJ_IDEA)
. And you can just open your task manager and see how much memory or cpu it
uses.

------
divbit
I use similar tablets for development, and I think 4gb of ram is pushing it,
if you want to have, for example a heavier web browser and a larger IDE open
at the same time.

It is doable though if you are willing to spend some time tuning your device,
e.g. set the priority for some tasks lower than they want, so they don't hog
the system resources while doing something. [http://www.wikihow.com/Change-
Process-Priorities-in-Windows-...](http://www.wikihow.com/Change-Process-
Priorities-in-Windows-Task-Manager) I ran a 2gb ram, 10", dual core atom for
4ish years by doing this and using a lightweight browser, like opera or ie.

------
tmaly
The 15 inch Acer Chromebook allows you to upgrade the SSD to a larger one for
around $50 and you can install Linux on it as a dual boot.

I paid around $225 for my Chromebook on Amazon.

This particular model will is slated to get Android app store support sometime
this year.

------
dotdi
I would _never_ go for less than 8gigs of RAM for a dev machine. My current
machine sports 8GB and it's often frustrating.

~~~
KurtMueller
What languages do you program in and what toolsets do you use?

~~~
dotdi
Depends, but most of the time it's either

\- Java: Eclipse and the actual application running that I am working on, _or_

\- JS: Sublime, a server for running and testing, a few Chrome tabs + Chrome
Dev Tools.

While both of those would work fine with 8Gigs, if I ever happen to have to
run more things (as in, the aforementioned things at the same time or a VM
next to any of them) at the same time, things slow down considerably.

------
tehwalrus
Doesn't fold out as a tablet, but my dell XPS 13 is epic. I did swap out the
WiFi card, but only because I run Linux, and the broadcom one had crappy
driver support.

~~~
dagw
Dell is releasing a version of the XPS 13 that converts to a tablet. Although
I doubt it will classify as cheap

~~~
rhodysurf
Also only with Core M processors I think

~~~
dagw
The latest iteration seem to ship with 7th gen i7 or i5 processors, but the
lowest powered and slowest Y-series versions of those processors. No idea what
that means in real-world performance though.

~~~
scholia
All the Y chips are Core M chips, as used in the MacBook...

------
badloginagain
[http://www.lappylist.com/](http://www.lappylist.com/) is a fantastic,
comprehensive comparison for a range of laptops. It also dispels a lot of the
myths I had about laptops, what is important in them, etc.

I can't recommend it enough.

~~~
pthreads
Thanks for link. It looks very useful.

------
jagtesh
If you are a power multi-tasker (20+ browser tabs at any given time) running
IntelliJ with a couple of electron apps (Slack, Spotify), it will slow down
your system with constant disk-thrashing on a 8 GB machine even with an SSD. I
use a Macbook Pro 2015 (8GB RAM/128 GB SSD) and I cannot run a fully featured
IDE anymore. No more WebStorm or RubyMine. Vim is the only way to go!

You're a little bit in luck as Windows machines are considerably cheaper. Go
for at least an i5/16GB/256GB SSD.

~~~
BoorishBears
> I use a Macbook Pro 2015 (8GB RAM/128 GB SSD) and I cannot run a fully
> featured IDE anymore. No more WebStorm or RubyMine. Vim is the only way to
> go!

I use an identical i5 model with Android Studio (think IntelliJ with more
resource usage), an Android emulator/VM, a Gradle daemon taking up 2-3GBs for
builds, Safari with umpteen tabs, Slack, Outlook and Spotify open and don't
have issues with disk thrashing (or at least, none I can tell based on usage
and the Activity Monitor memory pressure).

I don't know how you're forced to use Vim.

I've noticed that OSX will do what I'd like any modern OS to do and use the
majority of my ram with a few things running things running. But adding more
of a workload when it's using nearly 8GB doesn't instantly make it "run out of
memory", more paging occurs but not nearly enough to cause disk thrashing (or
be easily perceptible)

~~~
jagtesh
I'm not forced, I quite like working on Vim. However I develop on a multi-app
setup, 3 backend services and 4 npm based frontend apps with watchers and
works running in background. RubyMine/Webstorm has a hard time keeping up and
the memory usage shoots up to several gigabytes. As for Slack, I counted just
now - the compressed memory usage is ~750MB! These things seem insignificant
but do add up, especially with Chrome which itself takes a few gigabytes.

------
Uberphallus
Don't go for Cherry Trail devices
[https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155241](https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155241)

While waiting for that to be fixed I got one for double the price, but 2x-4x
the specs.

~~~
milankragujevic
Agreed. I got myself a Braswell (N3160), 4GB RAM, 32GB eMMC (but it has an
unused SATA port and bracket, so I will put in a 240 GB SSD for storage and OS
and use the eMMC as a backup solution). It's the Acer ES13. Cost me 24990 RSD,
or in USD $215. Pretty nice, typing this on it. Using Ubuntu as the main OS
with kernel 4.9.0 (the default Ubuntu 16.10 one cannot return from suspend
properly) using Remmina to access a OVH Ubuntu server which runs Windows 10 in
VirtualBox. It's a decent and very portable setup, if you have Internet
ofcourse. The battery lasts me 5 hours, it's a 3 cell built-in LiPo, but I
can't remember the watt-hours rating, however the CPU is only 4 W, and I use
the screen at half brightness.

------
throw2016
I'd suggest looking at the Asus Zenbook flip for a budget between $700-900. It
has options for a 4k screen and i5 or i7. It plays in the same league as the
HP Spectre 360 and Surface book but is cheaper.

Another option is the brand new Chromebook pros by Asus and Samsung at
$499-$550 powered by the Skylake i3. These are higher quality Chromebooks than
previously. The Samsung has a nice IPS 2400x1600 resolution. They are
Chromebooks though.

------
BoppreH
I recently bought a new HP ProBook 440 G3, for 610 €. Not a tablet, but thin
and light. 6th generation i5, 256GB SSD, 4GB DDR4 dual channel (I upgraded to
16 GB for 99 euros), full HD screen, fingerprint reader, plenty of ports (VGA,
HDMI, many usbs, SD card, ethernet, which is surprising in a thin notebook).
Easy to take apart too.

Only downside is the TN screen. In the US it's probably even cheaper.

------
PascLeRasc
Check out the Acer C720 running Gallium OS (Xubuntu). They're available with
i3s and 4gb of ram and they're quite sufficient and have a great community.

~~~
yathern
I wholeheartedly agree - though I chrooted mine instead of running Gallium. It
allows me to use the super easy ChromeOS, and instantly switch to Debian when
I want to do anything more. It's light, small and has a good battery life, and
cheap. All things I want in a laptop so I can throw it into my bag and forget
it till I need it.

------
cmdrfred
On a extreme budget a Chromebook with crouton running Ubuntu has served me
well. I use it mostly as a thin client for the server in my basement.

~~~
Theodores
Me too. Delighted with my Acer 14" screen with aluminium body and all day
battery, plus the sound only works through HDMI so no YouTube time wasting.
250 quid - bargain.

------
GiorgioG
I bought the Hi10 Pro + keyboard and it arrived Sunday. Last night it refused
to turn on, got warm, then got uncomfortably hot. It's going back to Amazon
today and I've ordered an iPad Pro (for my needs it's a better fit anyway
(reading brooks.))

General observations - Windows was sluggish, no way you're going to be happy
with IntelliJ performance on it. I installed VS Code but did not attempt any
real work on it. Yes you can install any Windows app on it. The keyboard
attachment is really heavy.

Get a 12" MacBook or similar laptop. They are more reliable, powerful and
seemingly less likely to catch fire due to cheap electronics.

------
oops
What sort of software are you planning to write? e.g. apps, webdev, games,
command-line utils, etc.

In what language?

Do you need to be able to code while offline?

An iPad with the keyboard case could work, particularly if you'll always be
online. You can just use it as a dumb terminal to ssh into a more powerful
remote server.

Another idea is the old MacBook Air 11". It doesn't meet your requirement of
being a tablet but it's just as portable and would give you a lot more grunt.
You can probably get a refurb or used one fairly cheap. 8GB RAM, SSD, good
battery life...

~~~
jaegerpicker
I use a iPad Pro for exactly this case. I do 50-75% of my everyday work on it.
I develop node.js and web frontends and iOS apps. I mostly do my node work on
emacs on a remote server via Coda. Recently I've using swift playgrounds to do
real work on the iOS side and it's been great, though often I need to break
out the macbook pro for debugging sessions.

------
g105b
My choice:

Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1. Perfect Linux support, great battery, well built
solid chassis, thin.

Negatives: Costs a fortune, and some people simply don't like Thinkpads.

~~~
Tushon
Completely agree with both points. My PYOD from work was a carbon and total
cost with dock and RAM/SSD "requirements" ended up north of $2k. However, it
is basically the best work PC I've used.

------
gpascii
I've owned two Asus Transformers: a T100 and a T200. Both beautiful
convertibles, the T100 build quality is imho better having a sturdier keyboard
and being more solid overall. Anyway the developing experience on the Intel
Atom is far from optimal. I do fullstack web dev and some Java on Android; VMs
on BayTrail (either with 2 or 4 gb of ram) are a pain to use, everything is
slow and simple tasks become very time consuming. No real multitasking with 4
gb of ram, Chrome will start to kill background tabs as soon as you open
Photoshop or similar. That said I've recently bought a refurbished Thinkpad
T430 for about $300. Best purchase for my productivity: runs Linux very well,
is fast with an i5 and 8gb, is silent, the keyboard is very very good, ssd is
fast, build quality is among the best you can find. Try a Thinkpad, you'll
love it.

------
jwatte
Program what? 4 GB is a little low these days, unless you're an Unix text
editor and makefile person.

Also, the rigidity of the keyboard and connection to it will be super
important. Most detachable keyboards will cause trouble (especially the cheap
ones.)

I'd recommend going for more ram, as big a screen as you can stand, and solid
keyboard.

------
bharath_gh
The linux support for these cherrytrail atom tablets is usually terrible. You
will probably have issues with touch screen, webcam, sound drivers and power
management. I tried a lot of these when trying to find a baytrail/cherrytrail
tablet to run linux for a project and most of them were terrible with linux.

~~~
slezyr
> touch screen, webcam, sound drivers and power management

Not that big problem. I own Chuvi HI12 & Teclast X98 AIR and it's almost
impossible to make WiFi work on these.

But there is a custom ubuntu distro with all fixes

[http://linuxiumcomau.blogspot.com.au/2017/01/first-2017-1704...](http://linuxiumcomau.blogspot.com.au/2017/01/first-2017-1704-alpha-
isos-for-ubuntu.html)

------
harel
Carbon X1 - hands down, no doubt, go for it. Get the 4th gen and you can max
it to 16gb ram. Otherwise you're limited to 8GB. Excellent linux support
(which I need), fantastic resolution, I love the keyboard. Touchpad can be a
bit too sensitive but i got used to it. Great machine.

------
dalacv
With Chuwi, you might find issues with hardware drivers for sound and
touchscreen:

[https://techtablets.com/forum/topic/linux-mint-on-a-chuwi-
hi...](https://techtablets.com/forum/topic/linux-mint-on-a-chuwi-hi10-tablet/)

------
rak
I ended up buying a used Lenovo x250 off ebay for a code training program that
required Mac but made case by case exceptions for Linux users.

It runs pretty well with Ubuntu out of the box. I got some additional power
savings with installing TLP and etc for Thinkpads.

------
cleaver
If it's for a trip mad you don't need it afterwards, you might think about a
refurbished MacBook. The initial outlay will be more, but the resale value is
good. I know people who've done this and actually came out a little ahead.

------
xd1936
I have a Dell Venue Pro 11 with it's keyboard dock, that I got for around $250
in total used on eBay. It's pretty good. It was a bit sluggish on Windows 10,
but I run Elementary OS on it and it's been smooth sailing.

------
lukaszkups
Zenbook UX32LN - I've got it since 2015 and still can't stop feel how amazing
machine it is. Running elementaryOS on it (linux), coding in Node.js, python,
cordova, rails and everything works like a charm.

------
jakeogh
Are there any ultrabooks with OTG/USB charging support?

(edit) Found:

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/3017182/hardware/usb-c-
chargi...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/3017182/hardware/usb-c-charging-
universal-or-bust-we-plug-in-every-device-we-have-to-chase-the-dream.html)

[https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-laptop-manufacturers-use-
usb-...](https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-laptop-manufacturers-use-usb-charger-
adapter-as-default-source-of-power)

------
ancymon
I didn't try it but lately I was thinking about the same thing. I came up with
conclusion that I'll try to get myself the cheapest laptop and try to log in
from it to some remote dev machine. I think renting for hours Amazon
Workspaces:
[https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/pricing/)
and working from cheap laptop might be not a bad idea.

------
nix0n
I used an Atom-based netbook as my primary dev machine for a while as a
student, and it was ... okay, but not recommended. I used GUIs, but not full
IDEs. (I highly recommend KDE's Kate text editor.)

I've since upgraded to an Intel i3-based system which is much better (for a
total budget of $450 including doing my own SSD upgrade). Both machines are
Asus.

If you want to use an IDE, make sure you also get a big enough screen for it.

If all you need from Linux is Bash, Cygwin will be enough.

------
SixSigma
I still use me Eepc from 2007

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC)

------
werber
I'd suggest a used macbook air, try to go a couple years back, and look for a
little bit of cosmetic damage to drop the price super low.

------
Const-me
Programming something professionally in C++, definitely no. The main factor is
CPU, #2 is RAM amount.

But if by programming you mean learn python or C#, most likely yes.

P.S. Couple months ago bought Acer V3-372-34W8. Not an ultrabook, but weights
under 1.5 kg, not too large, thanks to its Iris GPU has 64MB of L4 CPU cache,
and unlike real ultrabooks this one is upgradable.

------
baybal2
Panasonic RZ6 - 18 hours battery life, i7 (not a real "U" series one, though),
18 hours idle battery life

------
siphr
Lenovo x220/x230.

------
rhodysurf
I recently got a new Surface Pro 3 for 450 on Ebay and love it, even runs
linux well.

------
lcnmrn
New MacBook Pro 13" sans Touch Bar is the best for what you need.

~~~
deathanatos
I just got a new MBP 13", without the touchbar.

The keyboard is terrible, IMO, compared to prior models. The keys are
shallower, and give less; compared to e.g., a Lenovo Thinkpad (I also bought
recently), it's like typing on the desk itself. No give. My "a" key gets
stuck, and it's not two weeks old. Before you buy one, go by an Apple store
and type on one for yourself.

The adapter situation is nuts. the MBP 13" w/o touchbar has _two_ USB-C ports
— that's _it_. You're effectively using one for power, leaving you with a
single port that basically won't plug into anything you have. If you have a
pre-existing dual monitor setup, AFAICT you're expected to sink ~$200 into
adapters and hubs. (Note that most hubs seem to come with a USB-C port, so you
can get a USB-C hub that will add several USB-A ports, w/o losing any USB-C
ports.)

Otherwise, it seems like a MBP. Apple did finally start putting a decent
amount of RAM in them. This one has 16GB compared to my last MBP's 8GB (which
Chrome just devours…)

It ironically has a headphone jack though.

~~~
ttub
I share your sentiment.

I got a 13" TB in Novemember, and I just had to return it to an apple store
and have the keyboard replaced because the shift/enter key was stuck. The TB
(100 % gimmick) also sometimes randomly looses light on some of the buttons
(which re-appear when I touch them)

I thought I would get used to the keyboard, but I dislike it so much that I am
selling it and getting a 2015 MBP instead. This proved to be one gigantic
time-wasting, expensive, and annoying experience.

------
genericacct
Avoid Chuwi at all costs

