

Ask HN: Best developer notebook in 2015? - gadr90

So, been a while since I last saw a post discussing notebooks here in HN. What is the best notebook for developers in your opinion and why? From ultrabooks to desktop replacements, every vote is valid.
======
automathematics
I was burning through lots of Apple laptops for the last ~10 years. Finally,
when I started my own startup (and was doing heavy consulting in the
beginning) I decided to take all the spare capital I had and invest in a "top
of the line" Macbook Pro.

I got a deal through a third party apple reseller and still paid around $2300.
This was late 2012 and I am still typing on it today with no desire to
upgrade. 3 years on one machine is an eternity from me.

I got the 512 SSD so I could run multiple OS's and not worry about still
having room for any media I might want. I _still_ have ~80gb free with all my
mp3's and VM's. 16GB of ram and a retina display as well.

I get the "apple hate". I really do. I have 3 laptops total in my life
(Chromebook Pixel and Debian HP Stream 11 which serve very different purposes)
and I still feel that the OSX is the best Unix based operating system for
productivity in my market (startup/web development).

Maybe when Linux display tools wrap their head around high dpi displays, my
opinion will change (Chromebook Pixel handles it very well so it must be
coming!) but I really urge anyone who says "I personally will not buy anything
from Apple" to reconsider why they're saying that.

Even Microsoft is making some pretty awesome choices these days, so I for one
would never rule out the possibility of someone woo-ing me.

..a brief aside on the price... if I bought this for $2300 in December 2012,
then I used it for all of 2013, 2014 and 5 months in 2015. 29 months of use.
That's $79 a month invested in the thing I MAKE MY LIVING with. The price is
only bad if you compare it to other "comparable" laptops. If you can get 3
years out of a $1,000 laptop without it slowing down your work, then props to
you. I personally never could do that (even with other apple devices. Just try
and think about the big picture when you purchase your dev machine, whatever
make/model it could be :)

~~~
robbyking
> _OSX is the best Unix based operating system for productivity in my market
> (startup /web development)_.

I agree 100%. For years I used Linux for _almost_ everything, but I always
kept Windows installed on a separate partition for the handful of Windows-only
programs I needed as part of my job. (Photoshop being the most notable.) A
coworker finally convinced me to make the switch to a MacBook Pro, and I
haven't looked back: Apple bashing aside, the truth of the matter is my MBP
runs well, runs consistently, and supports all the tools I need as a software
engineer.

And regarding your point on price: I have a two year old ThinkPad (they were
literally _giving_ them away where I work) that I finally gave up and
installed Linux on because of its poor performance. Compare that to my
early-2011 MacBook Pro, which I still use for day to day web browsing, web
development and light Photoshop work, and the long term cost benefits of a MBP
become apparent.

------
frikk
For what it's worth, I love my lemur from System76. It ships with Linux (that
you can overwrite without voiding the warranty), and they of course guarantee
that the hardware will be supported, at least by Ubuntu. The build quality has
been great, and the customer service is great too. Plus the feel good factor
of buying from a small US company.

[https://system76.com/laptops](https://system76.com/laptops)

Mine is 3 years old, and the 8-core (ht) i7 with 16GB of ram has never let me
down, plus the graphics are fantastic. Battery life is about what you'd expect
from a non ultra-light (4-6 hours out of the box).

~~~
automathematics
Yeah System76's generally rule.

~~~
tluyben2
Shame they don't do better battery life. It's a niche but one they could
accommodate...

~~~
mlwarren
Do you have any numbers on their battery life? I've done some googling and
can't seem to find anything definitive.

------
johnstorey
My approach is to try to make the discussion irrelevant. Instead, I'm going a
bit extreme and making all my real machines VMs, and working off a chromebook.
The theory is that I can easily configure VMs to be more powerful when and for
as long as needed, then get rid of them. If the chromebook is lost, I lose
nothing. If I don't have it, I can work from whatever computer is around,
provided I have a USB drive with my SSH keys.

I make my living providing web application development services, and have had
to make some changes to my workflow.

\- My online video meeting solution was not a SaaS application, and was
replaced.

\- Google Docs works, but it's not as flexible as Microsoft Word for me. But
Word online did not seem appealing, so it's Google Docs here. Key company
documents have been put there to act as templates.

\- Lastly, I need a decent internet connection to get anything done.

Other than that, everything remains much the same. But take me offline and
there is little I can do. On a recent international trip I had to plan what I
took on the plane to be productive carefully as I could not guarantee there
would be a decent internet for the chromebook to connect to.

My corporate IT infrastructure is in an AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC),
fronted with a VPN server. Internal corporate applications run on a private
subnet on the VPC. I do miss the Retina display from the Macbook Pro I used to
have before, but not as much as I expected. Lastly the wife retains a beefy
iMac as she is the lead designer. I can borrow if it becomes necessary. So I'm
running with a safety net. Since we are making a living off this
infrastructure for our small development shop I wanted to have a fallback
available.

This setup has been on a trial run for three months so far. While some changes
had to be made in my workflow, to date I am as productive as I was before.
Currently I predict continued success. There is very little left to test, and
I am running the team as before while contributing live production code.

------
hashtree
Rather than giving you a specific laptop, I will give you a strategy I have
used for a number of years that has worked well for me. It allows you to have
brand new equipment each year for less than what you pay buying a laptop and
replacing every 3 to 5 years. I've only tried with Apple products.

    
    
      - Create an Amazon seller account in which you have absolutely stellar reviews and customer service. A perfect five stars is what you are aiming for, which is pretty easy to accomplish if you try (e.g. with roughly 50 sales over the years, I only have one 4 star review and all others are 5 stars).
      - Purchase the Mac product(s) you want.
      - Ensure you keep good care of the laptops and also keep the original boxes and accessories.
      - When Apple comes out with a new version, immediately buy the new version(s).
      - Sell your old version(s) via your Amazon seller account.
    

Personally, I buy a low-end portable laptop (e.g. 12-inch rMB or 11-inch Air)
and also a high-end laptop (e.g. 15-inch rMBP). You will find that the low-end
of any product by Apple will retain their value best. However, even purchasing
high-end (but non-customized) product is still pretty solid. This advice also
works for iOS devices. On the whole, it costs me ~$750 a year to "lease" both
the laptops. For example, I recently purchased a new low-end rMB for $1299.
Given my seller account, I expect to resale the same laptop for ~$1099 when
the new version comes out. So, I get a new rMB laptop each year for ~$200.

You will find certain product lines hold their resale value better. For
instance, iPads, 13-inch rMBP, and both Airs hold their value well. On the
other hand, iMacs and Mac Pros don't hold their value very well. In the middle
you have iPhones, 15-inch rMBPs, and Minis. Customized add-ons (in which you
can't go into a store and buy) are a huge no-no with this approach. The
depreciation cost is just too high.

------
NathanKP
Macbook Pro for me. It sits on my desk in clamshell mode with two external
monitors and a mechanical keyboard plugged into it, running a couple VM's, my
docker container cluster, my editors, and browser tabs, my music and Slack,
and never a noticeable slow down. I rarely even hear the fan. When I want to
go portable I can disconnect and go for many hours with no worry about
battery.

Honestly I think most modern laptops are more than powerful enough for
development work. The only thing that matters to me is keyboard, because
unless you are buying a cheap budget laptop it will have more than enough
power for whatever you want. And when it comes to keyboard I just use an
external keyboard anyway so whatever it is plugged into is fine for me.

The only reason I absolutely must have a Mac is for running X Code and
building ios apps, because I'm not going to be running a hackintosh for that.

~~~
avinassh
> because I'm not going to be running a hackintosh for that.

may I know why? Currently running Hackintosh and it's been fine. I am doing
Stanford's Course and so far it's been fine. My laptop is pretty old, now I am
thinking to whether to get a MBP or go hackintosh way.

~~~
NathanKP
Beyond the obvious dubious legal stand of using a system that is in violation
of Apple EULA for business purposes I've heard a lot of issues from some of my
coworkers that have experimented with hackintosh for their personal use.

It seems many of them have problems as diverse as mice and keyboards not
working properly, to fans not running as expected. I haven't done it
personally so admittedly I'm not the best to speak on this matter. I can only
repeat what I've heard from my coworkers about their experience. Fundamentally
I'm not a fan of fiddling with configuration to get my computer to work, and
would rather just use something that works great out of the box as a tool so I
can focus on fiddling with code instead.

------
gberger
I have a MacBook Pro 13" and I love it.

\- It was refurbished, so it cost ~20% less

\- Incredible hardware

\- OSX is Unix that just works -- as opposed to having to fiddle with
installing a distro and finding good drivers

\- iOS development is a huge market

\- OSX has awesome apps. Some of my favorites: Subtitles, Adapter, Alfred,
Keynote

------
ekr
I'm still using a 2009 HP 6910p (Core 2 Duo T7300 CPU) bought used for 120E in
2012 or thereabouts. I use it for C (mostly, but also py, haskell etc)
programming, Arch Linux + i3 WM, it has a great keyboard, everything works out
of the box.

There are very few things a modern laptop would bring me that this one
doesn't.

At home I have a much more capable development desktop, and at work an even
better (i7 4790) computer. But the thing is, apart from the lower power
consumption (from 20W-30W regular usage down to 10-20W, depending on the
configuration), there's no point in upgrading for me.

I'm still a student, so I'm still playing occasionally with things like OpenGl
shaders, game programming, machine learning, and other orthogonal areas of
computer science, for that I use my desktop. I don't think a laptop is that
great for working (sub-optimal posture).

But sure, there are people who need bigger screens/ more horsepower (high-
performance computing/ those coding in memory hogging environments).

But for Linux, and low-level programming, a slightly older machine definitely
suffices.

Granted, I live in a part of the world where one can live reasonably for a few
months-up to a whole year for the price of a rMbp, and I value financial
independence, freedom, more than the status signaling ability a Mbp could
bring, but I do see why others might value it more.

------
shadeslayer
Here's what I'm looking for personally :

\- 16 GB RAM

\- Intel Iris

\- Core i5/i7

\- 13" \- 15"

\- Under 3 pounds

\- UHD+ Screen

Here's everything that comes close, though all of them one common pitfall, RAM
is limited to 8 GB

UX301LA

Thinkpad X1 Carbon ( No Iris as well )

The ones that don't make the grade :

Macbook Pro 13" \- Didn't like the keyboard, little to no keytravel

------
jpetersonmn
Been a longtime Windows user that recently switched to a mb pro 13 about 9
months ago. So far it's great. Even with only 8 gigs or ram I can run all the
things I need plus a vm when when I need it to test something. Battery lasts
all day no problem. Love that when it wakes up it's just like an ipad, boom
it's on and ready to go always. I've never had windows laptop that could wake
up from sleeping like that reliably. Good luck with whatever you choose.

------
serf
I'm considering a Asus UX305 as my next investment.

It's cheap, pretty high resolution, thin, light, good battery life, and no
touch screen. (an important one for me.)

------
benjohnson
I have a _secondary_ laptop with a PixelQi daylight readable display. The
ability to do light work middle of a park is a godsend for my soul.

------
abawany
I can recommend my Fujitsu T902 Tablet PC. 1400x1050 display, well designed,
and the stylus comes in handy for sketching and etc. when I need it. EDIT: I
added a Seagate SSD to it, which made it better. Also, the memory is user
upgradable, a benefit that I appreciate and have used.

------
mark_l_watson
It would help if you specified your OS of preference (OS X, Linux, or
Windows).

~~~
gadr90
I personally will not buy anything from Apple, but I think it's relevant to
the discussion that every vote is cast. It's not a poll for me, it's a
discussion for everyone!

~~~
mark_l_watson
Here is what I use: MacBook Air for OS X, an old Toshiba u505 for Linux, and
an HP stream 11 for Windows (really cheap, light weight and good battery life
so it is good for travel).

All of my laptops have Java 8, IntelliJ, lein (for Clojure and Clojurescript),
git, ssh, Chrome, Ruby, and Python installed.

I mostly write my books using markdown and a text editor.

It doesn't really matter which of my laptops I am using. Living in IntelliJ
and Chrome makes OS choice not so important.

Edit: I just used the HP Stream 11 exclusively while travelling, and Windows
8.1 is working well for me. I am thinking of switching to a Surface 3 because
I like the form factor. One requirement: all of my laptops can connect to a
large monitor on the desk in my home office.

------
dman
Lenovo T450s. - Light, very well built, impressive thermals and acoustics,
really good battery life with the 6 cell battery, 1080p matte ips display that
is very good, latest broadwell chips.

~~~
tluyben2
What is really good battery?

~~~
dman
~12-14 hours.

------
sciencesama
if you want a linux buy a dell xps 13 its perfect laptop.

~~~
gadr90
I am writing from one right now! It's definitely speedy, but I find the build
quality to be rather low and the 13" screen simply cannot accomodate a Full HD
resolution. Everything is rather minuscule...

~~~
marvy
Why not just use a lower resolution? Does it make things too blurry?

~~~
gadr90
Precisely

------
edcastro
Think it depends on your OS of choice. But if on Windows or Linux, i'd say the
Lenovo X1 Carbon. Light, enough power and Linux friendly.

------
hn_user2
Hands down MacBook pro for me. Was long time sceptic. Finally took the plunge.
Now a happy user.

------
technological
Thinkpad w540.

Great windows laptop for me

