
Ask HN: Reasonable dev laptop? - raihansaputra
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&#x27;t qualify for the &#x27;Staingate&#x27; replacements, footing $600+ for a display replacement is just a bit too much. I&#x27;m also looking to move away from Apple products.<p>I&#x27;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 (&gt;6 hours preferably), and can handle Modern web browsing (webapps and stuff). Preferably not too heavy to lug around. I&#x27;m doing light dev work on Django and trying to learn React&#x2F;Angular.<p>I&#x27;m kinda interested in getting older thinkpads (t430&#x2F;x230s) but concerned on the battery life part. If any of you have any suggestions, it would be great.
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BjoernKW
If you were happy with the MacBook Pro $600 seems like a reasonable price to
pay in comparison with the roughly $2000 you'd have to be for an equally
powerful new machine. It's not like those $600 would be a sunk cost. If the
machine is still good apart from the broken screen why waste money and
resources?

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.

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tannhaeuser
According to my anecdata, most devs are using either Dell XPS (or other
notebook with Ubuntu preinstalled or listed as supported such as Inspiron or
G5 gaming laptop) or Lenovo Thinkpads (T480 or X1 depending on your budget).

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).

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adetrest
I use an i7 IPS x230 (ie top of the line at the time) with Linux for dev work.
It's great. I have the 9 cell battery (but it's getting old, I only get 60% of
the full capacity when full nowadays), and I can still achieve 6-7h on WiFi.
It hovers around 8-11W with i3wm. Powertops is great at optimizing power
usage.

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.

~~~
ioddly
I'm very happy with my x230. I bought a refurb one for $250 and slapped a new
$70 battery in there, runs like a champ. The only thing I wish I'd done
differently was going out of my way to get the IPS panel: the TN is really
bad.

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O_H_E
Check out the Thinkpad A series, a replica of the X & T but with Ryzen CPUs ->
More Cores

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

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mstaoru
I'd say get a $250 aftermarket replacement top lid from China, a screwdriver,
and 2 hours free time to DIY the replacement. Bonus credits for eco-
friendliness. Your laptop is okay, and IMHO there is no need to throw it away.

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.

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tarcio
I recently asked work to replace my brand new Apple (with the infamous touch
bar, 16GB, 256 SSD, etc etc) with a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th Gen.

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

~~~
hazz99
How hard was it to get the various peripherals working? Things like the
trackpad, bluetooth etc.I've had a lot of difficulty getting Linux working in
the past, and it's stopped my from making the jump from my Macbook :(

~~~
tarcio
A breeze, actually. Got all working with arch without an issue. If you're
going with Ubuntu I wouldn't even worry as they got most it covered pretty
well.

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.

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Findeton
G*d, I've been thinking about getting a new laptop too. It seems it's still
normal to get 8Gb RAM laptops, just like my 2013 laptop, which I find quite
limited for developing when you use VMs.

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.

~~~
Faaak
Curious question: Are you afraid of writing "God" ?

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jmmarco
I would probably go for the new replacement screen.

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.

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xrd
I love my Chromebook. It runs Linux, not exactly Ubuntu but you can use apt-
get. Ergonomically it's amazing and I love the flip keyboard. And now the
sound works great.

Read more in this thread here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18205885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18205885)

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clircle
I bought an old thinkpad (T460) earlier this year after years of being very
hesitant to upgrade from an older (X220) Thinkpad. It's incredible. Great
screen, keyboard, battery (it's got two!), trackpoint... The whole package is
good as hell. I bought a fairly tricked-out one off Ebay for less than $550.
Running Debian Linux and this thing just flies.

~~~
raihansaputra
Great suggestion, I'm finding quite the same prices locally (i7-6500U, 8GB
RAM, 1TB HDD), but I'm looking over the specs and wondering whether the
Nvidia/Optimus / trackpoint / trackpad / wifi are working fine on linux? This
is a pretty beefy laptop to run Windows anyway..

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?

~~~
clircle
I don't have issues with drivers, but I don't use a lot of different devices
with the computer. Wifi and wireless mice work out of the box. Haven't tried
bluetooth, I'm not sure if it has bluetooth TBH.

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).

------
RandomGuyDTB
The Thinkpad X1 looks good for what you want:

[https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/Thi...](https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/ThinkPad-X1-Carbon-6th-
Gen/p/22TP2TXX16G)

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Zekio
I would recommend a newer model of the Thinkpad T line up since they have hot-
swapable rear batteries or the lastest Thinkpad A line up since they also look
like they have hot-swappable rear batteries while having at lots of cores and
threads

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cpt1138
The MacBook Air is still pretty reasonable. I thought moving from my 15” MBP
would make it seem way too small but so far it’s been stellar and far more
portable. Got a 2TB external SSD and run a lot from that (VMs).

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srinathkrishna
I bought a refurbished x230 off newegg a couple of years back and haven't had
any issues. I in fact upgraded the RAM as well and the battery life has been
pretty solid as well.

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jslove
Love my x220 thinkpad.. battery isn't so good and screen is old.

I prefer my x270 in everything except keyboard..

Ubuntu works perfectly on both

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iwiririwo
x230 has a 1366x768 display.

~~~
adetrest
It'd not as bad as it sounds in practice. The screen is also 12.5 inches so
pixel density is ok, and if you break lines at the 80 columns mark in your
code (as you should ;)), you can sit two vim windows side by side in a
terminal.

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.

~~~
adetrest
It's true that most Lenovo laptops come with horrendous, low resolution, TN
panels. Some models come with IPS variants (like the i7 x230)

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.

