
Ask HN: What's the best dev laptop? - swalsh
I love my macbook pro, but when I evaluated the latest models, I can&#x27;t bring myself to buy one again.  The specs seem lower than similarly priced competitors, and NO USB slots?  I think it&#x27;s time I look elsewhere.<p>My plan is to install Ubuntu, on the machine.  So I&#x27;ve been looking at the Dell XPS 13.<p>I want a machine with a great display, I like the 13&quot; form factor.  I also really loved the aluminum shell on my MacBook (I&#x27;ve dropped this laptop countless times).<p>What do you guys recommend?
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LinuxBender
Anything lightweight that has a long battery life is good. The Dev work can be
in the cloud or datacenter in a tmux or screen session. Lightweight so you can
put it in a small bag next to you on the beach whilst sipping your martini.

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PaulHoule
My preference is the opposite. Something big that fits 32 GB+ of RAM; for the
work I do, I need it. Other than the monster laptop and the power brick, I
travel super-light. (For instance, if I travel to a big city I will not pack a
lot of underwear and socks because I will buy some at Niketown)

It is not always practical to move big data sets to and from the servers a
lot. I think my next dev machine is going to be a monster desktop machine,
however, because the latest GPU is table stakes for neural network work.

