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Best Developer's Laptop?
s31523 writes "I love my current laptop, but unfortunately on my last trip the primary LCD went bonkers. It's an older Gateway (2 GB RAM Intel Pentium M 2.0 GHz, ATI M7). There are a handful of features I love about it: [1] Hot-swappable drive bay, with several components that can go in: CD/DVD R/W, extra battery, floppy drive, extra hard drive, memory card reader, etc. The extra battery option is especially appreciated — I can go 4-5 hours on battery power. [2] Docking station / port replicator: I like having my home setup with keyboard, network, and dual screens (a necessity). [3] It runs Linux. OK, I'm a wus, I actually have GRUB command three different OS's: Windows 98 (I have really old embedded software compilers that only run on 98, and yes I have tried every trick in the book to make them run on Linux), Windows XP Pro, and Ubuntu. I'm trying to find a replacement setup that offers the same flexibility and a little better performance. I am open to change as well. So, I ask Slashdot: What is your pick for best developer's laptop under $1,200, considering the features above?"
I go for comfort and portability when grabbing a laptop.
Who can be bothered with that.
Any new laptop is probably going to have a bunch of cores and hardware virtualization, so put ubuntu on that, and virtualize XP and 98.
Dell Prec' M4400 is perfect for dev'ing. But prolly not within your budget.
Macbook Pro. Run VMWare Fusion for your legacy stuff.
All the Java developers at my work used Apple and I found this odd. When I asked one, they mentioned that it was built on BSD so they could use shell commands that they were used to on other Unix based systems. My wife had one and is a system administrator and found it very easy to VNC, SSH and manage most of her servers from her Macbook Pro.
I gave it a shot and have been able to do Objective C, Mono development, LAMP dev and just about everything without any problems. There effectively is not any language or environment that is left out and Eclipse and Subversion work as great as they do on my Linux box.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
You can easily get one that will fit your budget of $1,200. The ultrabay drive is hot-swappable and you can get a Li-polymer battery to slide in there for extra staying power. Also, Lenovo has kept Thinkpad customer service to essentially the same level of quality that it was under IBM which, in my experience, has been nothing short of fantastic.
I use a Compaq Presario 1655. It's about 15 years old, but works very well. The battery even holds a 2-3 hour charge in its old age.
Processor: 267MHz (Pentium 2 I think)
RAM: 64 MiB; someday, I may take full advantage of the mainboard and upgrade it to 96MiB, but so far, 64MiB has been enough.
Harddrive: 250GB (upgraded; hard drive was the only thing to fail)
Optical: 4x CDROM
Cost: $0; Got it as trash.
It plays all the important games well (starcraft in wine, and nethack). The neomagic graphics card doesn't have any 3d acceleration at all, so 3d games won't work, but hey, you said you were a developer :)
Running a multiboot system like bootcamp. Yes it is more than $1200. Boo hoo.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Sounds like the Gateway/MPC 450-series laptops to me. The problem is usually the video system of the motherboard. Are you open to simply replacing the motherboard? Look at http://mundocorp.com/ or http://blueraven.com/. Either will sell you the parts or do the whole job for you.
I go to a lot of developer forums. Be it stuff designed in Java, PHP, Ruby, etc, there is one common thread I've noted of all the developers that present. 8 of 10 presents will use a mac. I switched a few years ago and couldn't be happier. I have VM Ware. Many people use VMs to run various windows versions, I like to use it to run Linux VMs that I eventually move off to other machines. Works fantastic. No need to reboot.
Now, if the OP is a .net person, well, Mac may not be for them. But there's something nice about being able to pop a BSD style terminal window.
This rocks for development: very good battery life, extra battery options (9 cell + slice), 14" is a good size if you travel, solid but not heavy. Get a Dell outlet system to meet your budget.
I have no problems with an XP + Fedora dual boot setup (I also have Vista for release compatibility testing). I put in a WD 320G hard drive since they only offered 250G.
If you can do these within your budget I suggest:
. Get A P series CPU for lower heat and better battery life
. Get the 1400x900 LED display
Only concern for you is that there may still be some issues with dual screen and docking as far as CPU throttling and heat. Check threads on forum.notebookreview.com
For serious GPU-based work (OpenGL, ...) and games you might not be happy but the more suited options will have worse battery life.
From my personal experience, if you want to have efficiency:
1. You will need as much screen estate as possible. Coding against spec? Against existing code? Against requirements? Writing tests against code? In all these cases you would want to have at least 2 windows open in parallel
Thus resolutions such as 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 are desirable. Don't go for 1280x800 unless portability is #1 goal.
2. Compiling ... Compiling ...
Investing in faster CPU will pay off in both short and long term. You won't be able to change CPU - almost not feasible.
3. Hard drive
Today's development requires a lot of tools open at same time, and often projects are huge with lots of small files.
Therefore, I recommend going for 7200rpm drive which will help you feel like you are using desktop (speed-wise)
4. Other stuff
Most laptops today come with lots of RAM, and decent graphics.
ThinkPad has the hotswap bays, excellent Linux support, excellent hardware support and turnaround from the factory, and there's always a 20% off coupon floating around. You can get a T series laptop with discrete graphics and well equipped for that $1,200 you're willing to spend, and probably far less. Not only that, but you generally get higher resolution displays than you get with Dell or Gateway laptops.
As for your Windows 98 installs -- why not use VirtualBox?
- oZ
// i am here.
I'm typing this response from a Thinkpad R500 :-)
Thinkpad docks are solid and have been around a long time, as have hotswap bays; some stuff like memory card readers are already present. Ubuntu works very well with both suspend and hibernate, many models support dual monitors via the dock (I think mine supports dual external monitors via the VGA and DisplayPort connectors, but haven't tested more than one external monitor; according to documentation two external monitors via the dock aren't supported), and the built-in LCD's resolution is extremely reasonable at 1680x1050.
And, of course, the keyboard is one of the best in the business (although I've heard vi users complain about the placement of the Esc key, getting proper spacing between F1 and Esc on a laptop isn't easy).
--Matthew
Buy a MacBook. Install 4Gb, buy Parallels Desktop for $50 or so and you can run every Windows and Linux in a Virtual Machine, and switch between them with Ctrl-Arrow. I recently did this and am very happy with it.
You are a developer. Your laptop is your main work tool. You may be spending upwards of 8 hours per day working on the thing.
WHY OH WHY must it cost less than $1200? You are saving in the wrong place. A better laptop will pay off much more than some initial cost different over time. Price is irrelevant in your case.
My suggestion: Buy the best laptop than money can buy. MacBook Pro 13". Upgrade the HDD to 500 GB 7200 RPM. Swap the optical drive with an Intel SSD 80 GB.
I really like Lenovos. It's what we buy for all our law professors.
I'm sure you can get a nice one for your price range, and they will basically always support all the features you need. That is just part of what they do. They really really understand legacy apps and hardware, and they strive to support it.
I'm sure any laptop you're looking for can do what you need, but one with the listed features? Only Lenovo still has all of that stuff methinks.
I always avoid HP/Sony/Apple b/c they are too proprietary for me. But that is just a personal bias.
Laptops, notebooks, netbooks etc all have their uses. (I am using one now while I watch TV). They seem to suffer from a couple of problems though...
Most of these problems are irrespective of the OS or make. These things are designed for specific uses, portability etc. If you want something to do your regular work on, get something with a full sized keyboard, mouse & screen. Laptops are good for meetings, travel and lounging in front of the idiot box.
Get a netbook or something for when you are away from your system and open a terminal session off it if necessary.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Seriously. You have bays for everything, long battery live, dust and spill proof enclosure which will withstand a lot of abuse (military spec), touchscreen and a lot of ports including serial. You can used one on ebay for less than 1500 USD or new for a little bit more than 3000.
Lenovo T400 has swappable bay (CD, HDD, extra battery). It has great LED-backlit LCD option. It has the enw intel mobile chipset so battery life is amazing (I get over 12 hours with the cd-tray battery and the 9-cell main battery)
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law
Choose any two.
So, I guess, you would want the laptop to come with Java preinstalled (if you a Java Dev), or PHP / Apache installed, if you are that way inclinded. For source control, best make sure it comes with a mainstream SCM software, something like Subversion and hopefully the same company will create an IDE that supports it out of the box , while at the same time recognizing that alternative IDE's are out there and provide support and assistance to those who want to use it. Of course, been a developer laptop, having a good Backup Strategy is important, you wouldn't want to loose all that hard work if your hard disk died now would you!. Finally, of course, that manufacturer would provide tools to allow alternative operating systems to run on their hardware so you can test your final product on different systems, or even provide links to third party software should you wish to run any OS in a virtualised environment.....
Shame such a company doesn't exist *sigh*...
I am also typing this from a T500 -- I am running Ubuntu 9.04 on it and I keep having problems with the graphics. The laptop comes with an ATI Mobility Radeon and the default driver doesnt deliver proper 3D performance and the proprieatry driver causes problems and X crashes.
The keyboard is ok, but not the good quality any more that oler Thinkpads had to offer.
Also, Lenovo does not offer to sell the laptop without a forced Windows license.
Another problem at least in my country is that Lenovo does not offer alternative keyboard layout options or any other configuration option -- one has to go with one of the available models.
Finally, Lenovo support sucks bigtime.
I've loved my HP HDX series laptop. Now, it's probably the largest laptop you will ever buy, but for development it is awesome. It has an 18.4" display, built-in blue ray ROM, and two internal hard drives and an e-sata port for a hot-swappable external. I can easily run two virtual machines at the same time on it (using Vista as the host operating system) and there's enough screen space to arrange your development environment however you want.
If that is too large for you they also have a 16" version of the laptop.
As for its portability, I have hauled it all over Europe via backpack (using one of the giant Rick Steves traveling backpacks). It worked for me, but I'm young and didn't have to walk miles with it or anything. It was just small enough to be used on all the flights I've taken on so far. If it was any larger you'd have to be in business class to use it without interfering with others.
The base 18" version comes in at around $1200.
This is the MSI GX630 specs. It's cheap, has metal casing, great battery, and is quality built.
Color Black w/ Red trim | Operating System Windows Vista Home Premium | CPU Type AMD Athlon X2 QL-62(2.0GHz) | Screen 15.4" WXGA | Memory Size 4GB DDR2 | Hard Disk 250GB | Optical Drive DVD Super Multi | Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT | Video Memory 512MB DDR3 VRAM | Communication Modem, Gigabit LAN and WLAN | Card slot 1 x Express Card | Dimensions 14.73" x 9.69" x 1.05-1.40" | Weight 5.6 lbs. | CPU | CPU Type AMD Athlon X2 | CPU Speed QL-62(2.00GHz) | CPU L2 Cache 1MB | Chipset | Chipset NVIDIA MCP77 | Display | Screen Size 15.4" | Wide Screen Support Yes | Display Type Wide XGA | Resolution 1280 x 800 | Operating Systems | Operating System Windows Vista Home Premium | Graphics | GPU/VPU NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT | Video Memory 512MB DDR3 VRAM | Graphic Type Dedicated Card | Hard Drive | HDD 250GB | HDD Interface SATA | Memory | Memory 4GB | Memory Spec 2GB x 2 | Optical Drive | Optical Drive Type DVD Super Multi | Optical Drive Interface Integrated | Communications | Modem 56K | LAN 10/100/1000Mbps | WLAN 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN | Bluetooth Yes | Ports | Card Slot 1 x Express Card | USB 3 x USB 2.0 (3rd port shared with eSATA) | IEEE 1394 1 | Video Port 1 x VGA, 1 x HDMI | Audio Ports Yes | Audio | Audio HD Audio quality, Dolby Digital Live | Speaker 2 Speakers (2W) | Input Device | Touchpad Yes | Keyboard Standard | Supplemental Drive | Card Reader 4-in-1 Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro) | Webcam 2.0MP | Power | AC Adapter 120-watt AC adapter | Battery 6-cell lithium ion | Physical spec | Dimensions 14.73" x 9.69" x 1.05-1.40" | Weight 5.6 lbs. | Manufacturer Warranty | Parts 3 years limited | Labor 3 years limited
If you're a developer that doesn't need to move your computer everywhere , then probably getting a desktop would be a smarter choice. For the same amount as the cost of a laptop, you could get much better hardware for a desktop. Unlike a laptop, if it breaks, you can probably replace it with minimal hassle.
I've been using an Asus G1 for a year and a half and it's handled everything I've thrown at it. The CD drive died a few months after getting it though, but I have a history of making cup holders somehow. The entire G series is made for gaming, and it pulls it off pretty well considering the price point and battery life. Some of them have very recent GPUs that can run CUDA or whatever it's called, the base G1 that I own doesn't however. My machine comes with a 2GHz core 2 duo and 2GB of RAM, and can happily push 24MB/sec through it's USB connections (important note for us pirates :) ). Perl 5.6.x compiles in about 12 minutes if I'm watching flash stuff. There are 4 USB ports, neatly clustered in the back. It's a work horse :)
All of it's hardware works with minimal tweaking and no show-stoppers with Ubuntu, and I hear the rest of the G series is the same. The webcam is shoddy under windows but flawless with the right driver in Linux. Win7 likes it pretty well too, very snappy. There isn't a docking station for it, but I have the similar use-case of coming home and resuming my work at my desk, where I have a second monitor and a real network (and so on). It takes all of 15 seconds to plug everything in, none of the ports are hard to access or hidden or cramped.
One very nice thing about it is that all of the media keys and LEDs are user-accessible under Linux, so it's no trouble to have Pidgin light up the new mail LED when you get a message, or other useful things like mapping a key to a self destruct script.
As far as gaming goes, it plays everything I want it to play, which includes Crysis.
I highly recommend Lenovo. They make a high quality laptop with the kind of keyboard that you can sit at and type out code for hours. I have their ThinkPad W500 and it is exceptional. Currently I dual boot. One is windows 7 and the other is Ubuntu. My Ubuntu install runs VirtualBox with VM's where I test out code for Windows servers and other environments. All in all while you don't need it to program I would recommend getting a machine with a 15 inch display dual core with atleast 2.4 ghz processor and 4 gigs of ram so that you can handle virtual machines easily. It will definitly help you out in the long run.
But as most/many people know, a virtualized Windows9x installation often doesn't work particularly well. In VirtualBox, it all but doesn't work at all because of the way "idle" time is handled. (I don't recall having much trouble using VMWare workstation long ago however)
Virtualizing instead of multi-booting is a far better idea for me. I use Windows XP on rare occasion and I definitely don't like taking my Linux down to run another OS.
A well made laptop needs a "port replicator" or "docking station" like a fish needs a bicycle. (Gloria Steinem reference unavoidable.)
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Well, there are people here who have deep experience with many models of laptops, simultaneously. Typically this comes as a result of being involved with large enterprises, which buy thousands every year. Then there's the one I use, on the basis of that experience (a MacBook Pro). Frankly, soliciting advice from people who have experience with one laptop every three years or so, seems quaint.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
With the quality, performance and price of "PC" notebooks today, you can get better battery time, better performance, better stability for less price. If you're into lightweight, you can get up to 10 hours battery time, for less money today. Just avoid Vista like the plague..
Mind you I am writing this on my Macbook Pro 17" running Windows XP. I can't stand OS X anymore (won't go into details here), so I installed Bootcamp and XP on it and am using it as my main computer now.
However, given the money, I would find a high-quality "PC" notebook (Lenovo or something like that?), with good sound and graphics. It may be hard to find, but with a bit of trial-and-error should be do-able.
The problem with my setup is:
1) Lack of proper BIOS, so forget about GRUB or any "normal" installation of Linux and "alternative" OSes. You are at the mercy of Apple's implementation and upgrades. Yes, you can find ways to work around it, but it's a big pain and it'll be "different" (oh noes!).
2) Had to find the "correct version" of Leopard, and several firmware upgrades, to make Bootcamp work correctly. Not all bootcamp versions give proper driver-support, or can be upgraded freely, and Apple gives only the last official version on their website. Eg. the camera wouldn't work for me until I had searched for a day and found some unofficial bootcamp drivers that both worked and installed correcly (not easy).
3) Utter reliance on Apple's bootcamp to make Windows work at all in native mode. If something goes screwy, eg. with a firmware/Bootcamp/Windows upgrade and Windows Restore doesn't fix it, prepare for hours of reinstalling everything.
4) If something goes wrong, total lack of support. You can't fix things yourself, like firing up a Knoppix disc and extract files. Oh, maybe you can in some obscure way, or pay for yet another Mac-utility, but it'll be a huge pain again.
5) So must rely on backup, and just wipe the partition if something goes really wrong and hope this is enough safety.
6) Windows on Bootcamp makes the computer hot and the fan goes on much more than OS X for some unknown reasons. Maybe because I have an older Macbook Pro, but OS X is better supported for sure.
7) Need third-party apps like Lubbo's Fan Control and Input Remapper installed to get basic "PC"-keys remapped, and better fan control. Not an optimal / supported solution. Macbook keyboard lacks several keys, like home, pgup, pgdn, and it'll take some time to get used to. Not quite as optimal as with these keys, so you rely more on mouse / trackpad.
8) Good solutions hard to find. I was lucky I found these solutions within 1-2 days.
All in all, I got it to work, but it's far from optimal and not somehing I would recommend to even my enemy.
On the other side, the Macbook Pro is great hardware. Great sound, great graphics. Lightweight and large enough to use as main computer. So all in all it is positive compared to most "PC" notebooks.
Best of all, I can use the trackpad all day, something I cannot do on most "PC" notebooks.
So if you're up for an adventure of hacking and travelling down the "bleeding edge" route, yeah, go for it..
But Apple's support for Windows is laughable. Even scrolling using the wheel isn't quite as good as in OS X.
You might have a problem with licensing, as if either of your original Windows licenses were OEM, you can't transfer them to new hardware. Not that I'm a stickler myself exactly, but Windows 95 (which you'll have to virtualise as you probably won't get hardware support for it any more). Or you can use a free virtulisation solution. My brother swears by the Sun one, but I'm not too sure about the Windows 95 support on it. My work supplies me a Dell Latitude 630 and I think it's barely adequate. The 830 is better, but they're still heavy and the battery life isn't great. I like Mac's, but you'd still run into a license issue unless you own a full copy of Windows XP, and I'm yet to see a docking station on a Mac. As far as I know you can't get full versions of XP any more, and if you did the $$$ mean more you spend on software the less you have to spend on hardware. I'd go with the ThinkPad myself. I have an old one I use at home, 1440*900 resolution, docking station etc. Runs dual monitors under Windows and unix really well and solid as.
Any of these I recommend over home/gaming/entertainment equipment.
Don't forget to get one without a glossy screen. It will limit your choices, but you can't work with a glossy screen. Trust me. These days the only models where they offer the option to get non-glossy will be business models. They are slightly more expensive, but also usually more durable.
Second, you should stop the dual-booting and start virtualization. VirtualBox or VMWare or whatever. I don't use VMWare, because they didn't have a deb package last time I tried and the rpm installation was pretty ugly.
For virtualization the best idea is to get virtualization support in the processor. AMD-VT or Intel-V. The cheaper Intel models dont have it. Which I think is very disapointing. I don't know why Intel does this and I don't like it at all. Because virtualization gets more and more important. Maybe they think they can sell new processors later, when people will need that feature. Because these days most people don't need new computers any more. Whatever it is: I usually would opt for AMD, but that REALLY litmits your choices, because business machines with AMD are hard to find. The only model for a good price I could find was the HP Compaq 615. It comes with glossy and non-glossy screens.
I also like the Latitude 2100 netbook:
No drive bay at all, no CD. If you need stuff, get them USB. Much cheaper than proprietary drive bay drives and features.
Obviously you will need to use VirtualBox (or whatever you prefer) to use other operating systems. And the Atom processor is not very fast. So maybe you won't take that one after all.
But netbooks are very nice, because they run very long and are very portable. The Latitude 2100 is the only netbook that comes with non-glossy screen.
Please remind me exactly why my post is troll...
I ask Slashdot: What is your pick for best developer's laptop under $1,200, considering the features above?"
The problem I have with this is the price. I too wanted a new laptop for development, and photography. After making a list of requirements, from a fast CPU to a fast and large hard disk drive, I looked at a bunch of laptops. The cheapest laptop I found that met the requirements was more than twice as expensive. Prices have come down since then and if you have an open mind on the hardware and software then I suggest you look at Apple's 13" Macbook Pro, it's base price is $1200 but of course if you want to run Windows on it then there's the price on an MS Windows license. You also have to consider the docking station, Apple doesn't make any though third parties do such as BookEndz, which adds almost $300 to the cost. A simple MacBook will be cheaper but if you want to run just MS Windows or Linux then don't bother with a Mac.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It's quite as meaningless as "best end-user laptop?". Different people, different needs.
Windows 98 (I have really old embedded software compilers that only run on 98, and yes I have tried every trick in the book to make them run on Linux)...
If can't get it to run on Linux, what will make it run on Mac OS?
Your post does have a bit of Mac Fanboy feel to it - just saying.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
My setup is a little different then what the OP is looking for, but it works well for me, in case anyone else is interested.
For 300 euros, I bought an Asus Eee 1000HE several months ago. The honest 6+ hrs battery life plus its weight makes it truly ultraportable, since I don't need to carry any cord or brick in my backpack. The Ubuntu Netbook interface works well on the small screen, and the CPU is efficient running Linux, & Firefox, etc. Skype audio/video doesn't work well I find (the Ubuntu Skype version is old), but Ekiga SIP does. In reality, the hours in-use is greater than just 6, because inevitably I'll get distracted, eat lunch, etc., so the sleep mode kicks in. I relax knowing the little thing has a fully encrypted hard disk, from these instructions:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=7489558&postcount=13 ..and also knowing that it is secure from malware, without the need to operate and pay for anti-virus software.
I cannot imagine running the XP OS (tax) that came with the unit, XP the interface seems like it would be too clumsy on the small screen, and with anti-virus etc. would slow things too much.
I have another 300 euro Compaq 15" notebook with a similarly installed Ubuntu OS so for me, the question when I leave the door for the day is: Do I need the larger screen, or true portability? If I'm just reading docs at the cafe, I love the Asus Eee PC. Each has a Logitech wireless mouse VX450 and a tiny USB nub that remains in-place 24/7. Its critical, (the batteries seem to last 1 year)
One key to everything working out so well, is my Dropbox acct which auto syncs files across home folders. In this way, I use the best suited of my two portable PCs for the day (big screen + brick, or more portable.) (Spider-oak has a better privacy policy than Dropbox though, and I'm meaning to switch). I figure both my Asus and Compaq cost less than half the price of Apple's cheapest notebook. But then in my work, I am happy using Gnome & firefox, etc.
For managing the Win 98 of the OP, I agree Virtual Box is quite capable, free, and runs well on Ubuntu. But not really on the cheap notebooks I described.
If you can, why not save a few bucks and get the "Value Line" or be able to spend the extra money on more RAM, peripherals, etc.... or beer? I see a few features with the Thinkpad line that may be unnecessary for a developer.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
That's clearly too much work for these docking station whiners, try the direct approach: BookEndz
Hey upstream docking station whiners! Have you heard of this new fangled thingy called Google? You might like it.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
If you're so big on logic, why don't you find them yourself? Hypocrite. At least he had an argument. All you have is an insinuation that he had at least two logical fallacies. And you offer no proof, no premises and no argument to prove your statement.
-XcepticZP
You're cracked.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I've found that laptops like the Asus G51 series (more or less designed for gaming) tend to be amazing for development as well. This is mostly due to the high quality of the individual parts, as well as a nice package, decent support, and redundancy built in, as there are 2 hard-drives built in, so you can run them in RAID 1.
Couldn't be much happier. When I'm in the office or home I hook up my USB keyboard/Mouse, my large monitor and 500G backup drive (for nightly backups of my subversion DB.).
When I'm out and about the long extension cord comes in handy. So does the two hour battery life. Sure, there are times when I really need to plug in and I can't so the trick is to keep your battery full (charge overnight) and when I hit the cafes I wait for the tables near the power plugs to empty out and jump on those tables. I've not had any problems. YMMV depending on location.
The small size really does mean portable. I've got 160G HD, 1.6G Hz ATOM CPU. Unless your compiling multi-million line projects, I find mine rather comfy. I built the entire boost library in ~1.5 hours.
Now for the killer: less than $300.00!! My last LT cost me almost $3,000.00 but was a PITA to lug around. It's still a fantastic machine but it's been relegated to the special projects heap. If this LT goes, who gives a crap. remove the HD, copy the data from the it (if it didn't make the nightly backups), buy another cheap-ass LT and move on with life.
It runs linux fine. I've been playing with SLAX lately (still a little flaky from a USB key, though) and it's exceeded my needs there, too. The Atheros WIFI card works great. (My HP never got the WIFI working.)
The only draw back I have with the device is its small screen resolution: 1024x600. Yes, that's six hundred.
Now, I've not done it but a friend of mine tells me his son runs WOW on his. I wouldn't run games as there isn't much in the way of cooling for the LT - no bottom fans. Just a large intake vent on the front and a exhaust port on the LHS.
Expressing my personal opinion is not a logical fallacy. Reporting my personal experience is not a logical fallacy. My inferences regarding build quality drawn from that experience, while subject to the usual caveats about inductive reasoning, are no less reasonable than those drawn by the O.P.
So I'm a little mystified as to what on Earth you're complaining about.
I have a netbook (Samsung 10). It's great, I run gentoo linux and use git as my scm. I can program on the go! It's my little Portable Development Machine (PDM).
Basically what the subject line says: stay away from anything you can get at Best Buy and you'll probably be golden. That means Lattitude not Inspiron from Dell, and so on. What you lose in 'features'. (better speakers, media buttons, graphics, shiny palmrests and so on) will be more than made up in quality
I know HP and Dell right now have extra battery 'slices' which can take your battery life over a full work day, and even into the 12 hour range, which is fantastic. Other accessories are mostly USB therse days, so not as much a concern for most as they might be for you.
- ------- There are ten kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who... Huh?
I would definately only go with nvidia graphics rather than ATI if you plan to run Linux.
nVidia's Linux drivers are far superior to ATI's.
Apparently ATI arent even ever going to release a Linux driver for my laptop's ATI Mobility Radeon 7500.
make sure you get the extended warranty then - I've had to replace the battery, hard drive, dvd player, and screen of my macbook, and this thing doesn't even get used when I'm not travelling.
Some may frown on it but I always get an extended service plan. I got one with my HP, Gateways, and I got Applecare with my MacBook Pro. I used the plan, which I'm glad I had, with my HP. I bought it at Best Buy and when it failed twice in the first year, the first tyme the hard disk then the motherboard had to be replaced, all I did was take it down to Best Buy. A few hours after I took it down because of the hdd failed they called me saying it was ready. Now when the mobo failed they had to send it to another repair facility, so I was without for a week.
I had trouble with Gateway though, this was when even the Gateway stores only placed orders for delivery instead of carrying stock in stores. I kept on having to call Gateway for tech support, and the first question asked after I gave them the serial number was "has anything been installed?" Of course because I wanted to use it I did install software and peripherals. So to get support I'd have to do a clean install of Windows and only Windows. Of course the hard drive then motherboard failed so I couldn't install Windows so eventually tech support agreed to send me a new drive and arranged to have the computer picked up the second tyme.
Anyhow with both my HP and Gateways I had 2 hardware failures in the first year I owned them. The only problem I had with my MacBook the first year was Apple had sent me an older version of software which didn't run on the new Mac version. The second year, after 16 months, the graphics had to be replaced then at the end of the 2nd year the DVD drive had to be replaced. Two hardware failures in 2 years on my Mac versus 2 failures in the first year with HP and Gateway computers, hard disk drives and motherboards in both cases.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I use both high-end laptops. Both have 15" screens.
MacBook Pro advantages:
+ much brighter screen
+ Nicer OS w/ native Unix support
+ trackpad is way better if you use trackpads
Lenovo Thinkpad t61p advantages:
+ 1920x1200 resolution fits *alot* of code on one screen
+ better build quality-- yes, I think the build quality is better than the macbook pro
+ its got the trackpoint (aka nipple) if you don't like the trackpad
+ much better keyboard
put ubuntu on that, and virtualize XP and 98.
At least a while ago, virtual windows on linux wasn't able to use hardware acceleration. I doubt that has changed.
My MBP's keyboard backlight was misbehaving within a couple of months of buying it. The machine regularly overheated playing games. The motherboard fried itself and needed replacement after a couple of years. The DVD drive is now extremely fussy about recognizing an inserted disc.
The last two Dell laptops I've owned each lasted well over 5 years with no problems.
I have had the opposite experience, of 4 Windows PCs and 1 Linux PC I bought new and 3 Macs, 2 I bought used and the one I'm typing this on now bought new, I have had more problems with my PCs. I don't know why but I had the hard disk drive and motherboards fail on 3 PCs in the first year and had to replace the RAM in 2 in 2 years. The Macs are a different story though. I bought a Mac SE30, which were made in 1988-9, in 1992. It died in 2000, I don't know why it just wouldn't boot up. A few months later I bought a used PowerMac 7300/200, which was made in 1997. It refused to boot up in January 2006.
In the 2+ years I've owned the Mac I'm using now I've had 2 hardware failures. The first one was after I had it 16 months.
Two failures in 2 years is better than 2 failures in 1 year as is lasting at least 9 years.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If you're writing code, you need a platform that is well supported by your IDE. If you're writing for vs.net all the time, you probably don't want a Mac. Using Eclipse for Java work, then Mac is fine -- etc.
Since almost any product on the market will work from a power standpoint, look at the details of form. Is the case well made? A magnesium or aluminum case can mean less flex even with less weight. Consider the touch pad -- is it multi-touch? Is the keyboard comfortable?
Also, watch the resolution. One mistake I've made in the past is getting too high a resolution screen for my eyes. At 15" the best resolution for my eyesight is 1440x900, so having a higher res screen means the typeface is too small or it's fuzzy as I switch to a non-native resolution for the screen (windows does NOT cope with rescaled fonts well).
In terms of stability, reliability, and so on -- I find Acer and Gateway to be near the bottom of the line; ASUS makes great hardware but I've never been happy with their support or documentation and their software (for custom bits of hardware, bios updates, etc) is downright terrible. Dell makes some great stuff in the latitude line, but the inspiron stuff isn't well made Dell's support has been downright misleading to me on more than one occasion (documented and published). FWIW, My Latitude D820 has been outstanding even if Dell's support has been terrible. HP has some stuff out that looks pretty, as does Toshiba but neither appeals to me all that much.
I'm kind of in the same boat as you -- I'm ready to replace this D820 after nearly 4 years, but nothing on the market right now really impresses me. I'm waiting for this winter's new stuff based on Core i7 to see what that looks like in a laptop. I'm also going to evaluate Windows 7. If it's not substantially more comfortable and more maintainable than Vista, I'll have no choice but to switch to Mac.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Weeelll... you can't just nuke it and install anything yet. I tried to install only Linux on the Macbook I have only to find it uses EFI only, so until grub2 makes it into distros and it fully supports the Macbook EFI, you're stuck with having OS X around just to setup bootcamp (and emulate the regular BIOS, I guess)
You can install and use rEFIt on an Intel Mac. Of course it's a good idea to keep a bootable OS X partition if no other reason than to update firmware.
To tell the truth I don't know why anyone would pay for a Mac and not use OS X. I'm typing this on my MacBook Pro running Leopard now. I have the Snow Leopard DVD but haven't installed it yet. When I do though I will also install Ubuntu. I already have my hard disk drive partitioned with 2 partitions for OS X and Ubuntu and another one for the user home. Doing this I can use any and all user files in both OSes.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I was in the same boat, 1 yr ago, except I had a Dell Pentium M that I dropped. Oops.
I dislike wide-screen, but that is the only screen you'll get now. This means, you're probably losing vertical screen space. I went from 1400x1280 to 1280x800 screen. SUCK!
OTOH, I went from 1.5GB RAM to 4GB, so I was happy. I'm looking to get 8GB RAM, but discovered today that the laptop only supports 4GB. It is running Vista-64, so more RAM would be usable.
VirtualBox for running xubuntu and WinXP. I spend almost all day, every day in an xubuntu VM. The performance is very good, including video editing. There's enough RAM to run Vista, WinXP and xubuntu simultaneously - basically, each gets 1.2GB of RAM which is good enough.
I ended up getting a Dell Studio 1535 for a very good price ($640). In fact, I'm hard pressed to find a similar deal even now. Here's the technical specs link http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/1535/en/index.htm
The only things I'd change are:
- better graphics card with higher resolution screen
- support for 8GB RAM
The C2D CPU with VT-M is excellent.
The 320GB disk is fine.
The slot DVD +/- RW is fine.
The ports - USB, Firefire, VGA, HDMI, GigE, 8-in-1 memory card reader - are all nice.
If you can wait, get Windows7 with your laptop. I got a free copy (would never pay for it) of Ultimate from MS (wish I could get those 4 hours back), but I'm unwilling to risk my current setup - $74 and a new 320GB 2.5" drive and I'm ready to install and get tweaking. Anyway, get Win7 with you new laptop.
Anyway, good luck and enjoy your new toy. Be certain to backup, backup, backup.
I've been running "Parallels" VMs over OSX and have to say it has 'whelmed me enough to enthuse about it. It can VM OSX'n linux'n and Win 98 thru 7 concurrently from images which can be snapshot, written back, or left pristine after use (disposable OS) or by boot-time OS selection. The copy/paste and crossplatform filesystem accessibility is handy. I've given it some heavy lifting and it works for me, even with only total 1GB RAM before I upgraded. For the expansion issue, I use a serviceman's combo USB to IDE & SATA device, and leave the drives open, also one or 2 in enclosures.
I had the same question a while ago... Except that I do a decent amount of graphic design and video work too.
I went with:
Dell Studio 1555
I upgraded the screen to the high-res one, which gives you a lot more code on-screen at a time. Context is massively useful in terms of productivity and quality.
Changed the HDD to the 7200rpm version
Added the back-lit keyboard, which really is a god-send at 2am when you're coding the dark to let the family sleep
Upgraded the battery to the long-life one (6 or 9 cell? I can't remember)
Made sure that the CPU had hardware virtualisation enabled (Intel arbitrarily turns it off for some models... Look for the list at Ars.
The thing has 802.11n, VGA out + HDMI, mini Firewire, card reader, a few USB ports, and a nice eSATA port, which is ideal for your hot-swappable storage requirement (an eSATA hot-swappable enclosure/backplane should be dirt cheap). Frankly, I'm struggling to see what additional use a dock actually would be.
It's a nice laptop that does the job reliably and without any irritating quirks. Honestly, it's the best I've ever purchased, and I'm very happy.
Java and shell don't belong in the same sentence. Java seems almost unusable without Eclipse (at least all the devs I know who like Java can't function without it) or some other heavyweight IDE. Sun seems to have gone out of their way to break every single Unix shell paradigm with Java, so Java apps always have to be treated with kid's gloves on Unix. Classpaths are an absolute disaster, and with all the JARs and WARs and other junk it's a nightmare to get anything to even run. Heck, even Eclipse barely seems to acknowledge that ANT exists, opting for it's own disaster of a build system.
You insulted his Mac, so he's offended and on the attack.
Heathen.
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
98 is going to be your problem child. You might consider dropping a message on the MSFN forums about a new laptop that will run 98. Virtulization has been mentioned. VirtualBox doesn't deal with it well. However, the Virtual Machine Software that Microsoft offers does OK with it, at least the earlier version of it does. So you could get by with a dual boot and use the XP and virtual machine for the 98.
All the above is worth just exactly what was paid for it.
The 13" MacBook Pro fits within your budget ($1199), has hardware virtualisation so can run any Intel-based operating system under VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop or Virtual Box
You don't get a hot-swap Ultrabay, but you probably don't really need the added complexity. It has a built-in 7-hour battery, has a built-in SD Card reader, has a built-in SuperDrive (Dual-layer DVD±RW, CD-RW) It doesn't have an option for a Floppy Drive from Apple, but any USB floppy will work with it (seriously, does anyone use them anymore? Even Windows doesn't need floppies to load drivers from during the initial install).
It doesn't have an option for a docking station from Apple, but it has all the ports on one side of the machine, rather than at the rear, so it's very easy to plug and unplug - I do this daily and don't miss not having a docking station. If you NEED a docking station, there's a 3rd party one from BookEndz
It has outstanding hardware build quality, comes with a fantastic development environment for free, and can run any of the open-source ones as well, can run Windows XP SP2+ natively on the bare metal, but who wants to reboot these days, so it'll run everything back to DOS in virtualisation. It will also open you up to a new user experience and a new operating environment that you may just end up liking. If you don't you format the drive and install Linux or Windows instead...
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
I've found that plugging and unplugging three cables, all at the side of the machine, not the rear, on a daily basis was actually a lot easier than dealing with a docking station. The docking station can change the hardware profile of a machine, makes it hard to put the machine to sleep when it's in the standard laptop configuration and then wake it on the dock, has a large and fiddly connector on the bottom of the laptop that always gets crap inside it and can be prone to breakage when users aren't docking and undocking them properly.
On the other hand, having three or four cables (power, display, USB, Ethernet) is pretty quick to connect/disconnect, doesn't change the hardware profile of the machine and can be hot pugged/unplugged without having to tell the OS that anything is happening.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
anyone have experience with how well the EFI-enabled grub (or any other bootloader that can run on a modern Mac) works?
I've read rEFIt is good, so an EFI enabled bootloader isn't needed for a Mac. I'm getting ready to install Ubuntu on my Mac. Right now I'm using Leopard but after I do a fresh install of Snow Leopard I'll install rEFIt then Ubuntu.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You haven't tried every trick in the book. You've tried every trick you know.
Why don't you go ahead and list your compilers here and maybe some other reader knows a new trick for you.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Small screen doesn't matter so much when it's entirely devoted to vi at 80x25. And it travels light as an added bonus.
a.) I of never done this. Is it fun?
b.) Where can I get an 4skin?
Lots of horsepower, diskspace, RAM, graphics power, and all in the best package of any laptop offering.
...At that price point I would definitely consider fujitsu S series. I have their older s2110 so about time I look at something new myself, I loved that cd/dvd comes out and in goes another battery. With 3.3 lb weight, its one of the lightest I have used. Full keyboard only second to thinkpad is a plus, screen is 12 inch or so, thats a bit of a bummer, but I choose portability over larger screen.
Quick looks says Fujitsu this with S6520 the new one. I just love this, and my 2 year old has tested this more than folks at fujitsu lab.
13" MacBook Pro satisfies your requirements for $1200.
[1] Drive bay replaced with built-in 7 hour battery life and SD card reader. If you want more than a 160GB hard drive, either upgrade to $250 or use a FireWire/USB drive (better to have an external anyway for backups in case you lose your laptop).
[2] Mac OS X integration with wireless network and Bluetooth keyboard is seamless. These days I plug in display, USB hub, and power, and it takes me less than 15 seconds to do especially because the power and display connectors are so small and easy to plug in. If you really need a docking station, there are third party ones.
[3] Runs Mac, Linux, and Windows XP/Vista. You'll need your older machine for Windows 98, but that's the case for practically any new laptop anyway. Mac OS X is great for development and comes with all the core tools and libraries pre-installed.
Only thing I'd suggest is to add RAM to the MacBook Pro's base 2GB. And I hope you aren't still using floppy drives.
By dual screens, do you mean two external displays or just a secondary display? The MacBook Pro does have dual-link DVI output and can drive quite a few displays, but you'll need an adapter.
Laptop:
Tiny worthless keyboard: Check.
Tiny worthless screen: Check.
Painfully slow I/O (the primary bottleneck for compiling): Check.
Desktop for the win.
I do not own a lenovo but that may be my next laptop. Great parts and long life are the most important with battery being next.
Right now I have a white macbook which I do CLI Linux development and XCode development. And i could do windows development too i guess...
I think the mac is the best but a lenovo would be very enticing to me because there would actually be a point to installing Linux on it. (OSX is built on BSD)
So choose what you want to develop and choose a laptop.
Always keep in mind the battery life.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/15/dells-latitude-on-instant-os-detailed-screenshooted/
The dell may be a fad but its really cool. :) ARM processor would be neat.
I've never complained about bad moderating on one of my posts before, but damn-- whoever marked that is an ass. There's no flamebait in it. There are just informed, practical and detailed opinions in response to the question asked.
Hey, whoever moderated this.....GFYS.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
A 13" MacBook Pro will run any flavor of Linux, Windows (with Bootcamp) and will also run Apple's Mac OS. Frankly, I'd want a 15" one, but you can always buy a 23" cinema display later if you start making some serious money from your programming efforts.
Here's what you get at your price point:
13-inch: 2.26GHz
Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB Memory (You'll want to add more later)
160GB hard drive
SD card slot
Built-in 7-hour battery
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics
You cannot touch Apple's battery life anywhere. And the processor is completely modern and sets you up to code for more than one core (commonplace on PCs today). And you get operating systems that will allow you the freedom to develop for any modern platform out there, save a mainframe.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Running Win 7 RC and 9.04, both 64 bit. The built-in verizon Sierra MC5725 works fine with both OSs...
As a developer, the keyboard is crucial. Nobody except Apple comes close to Lenovo Keyboards. Want to survive a 10 year or more as a developed using a Laptop, get one with a good keyboard. In my experience there are two suppliers. Lenovo is way ahead of the pack.
you just got for a bargain with a deal or by the new Z.
Two Voices | Two Guys
I feel for you on the problem with compilers that are only available for Windows. I do embedded systems development and have the same problem (although fortunately the Windows only compilers will at least work with XP). I only run Linux on my laptop, but use VMware workstation for the rare occasion that I need to use one of those old compilers. Works great.
Actually, for the most part the compilers that I'm using have a command line mode which works fine under Wine, so I rarely even have to start VMware anymore.
I'm quite happy with my current laptop by the way. It's a Dell XPS M1530 which I bought pre-installed with Ubuntu. I loved the fact that I didn't need to pay the MS tax when I got it.
I just bought a new laptop to replace the mobile workstation our school gives us (HP nw8240 for the 2005 class; now you know where I go to school!). While that computer was, even to today's standards, pretty freaking fast, I had no warranty on it and saw that the LCD was going at some points.
Instead of waiting a few months, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade two weeks ago. I was deliberating between a non-unibody Macbook Pro, a Dell Precision M-series and a Latitude E-series. Since I commute and am moving around a lot, I really wanted a computer that could take a bit of a beating and hold a decent charge, all while still being not being as powerful and svelte as my old machine.
In the end, I landed up getting a Latitude E6500 with the Intel Core 2 Duo CPU (P8600 - 2.4GHz with 3MB L2 Cache), 2GB of RAM (though the eBay ad advertised it as having 3GB...bastards :p), 80GB SATA hard drive, nVIDIA Quadro NVS 160M 256MB discrete graphics (not good for Crysis, but good enough for a non-gamer like myself :D), 15.4" LED WXGA LCD and an integrated webcame (VERY IMPORTANT) for $695 shipped.
This thing is awesome. Scratch that; it's FREAKING awesome. It runs Windows 7 like a Cadillac, looks damn good, has THE perfect keyboard (no, really...it's really, really good) and is pretty light (something like six pounds). It's 6-cell battery usually lasts me 3.5 hours, which is perfect for me. Thus, doing development work on it (right now, I'm working on projects in C, though I mainly do a good amount of scripting and am learning C# in the future) is just fantastic. You might want a bigger LCD; they have a WUXGA LED screen available, which I hear is phenomenal. I personally wanted something with a lower-resolution, as I hardly use 1920x1200 anyway (and most mobile graphics cards can't push that many pixels smoothly anyway when under load).
To add, I can get the fingerprint sensor, Bluetooth module and LED-backlit keyboard from Dell (more like from eBay) when I need it. Oh, and it came with a 3-year limited warranty, which isn't business-class, but it's perfect for me.
In short: Macbooks are still overpriced, and AppleCare still comes separately. My Latitude does EVERYTHING a Macbook would do (yes, it even runs OS X successfully)...while looking just as good and with more AWESOME.
If all you're using the 98 install for is one or more compilers that require it, have you considered using WINE? For a while at work I was playing around with using VC++'s compiler run under wine through the bash command line for easy integration into build scripts on my Ubuntu box. Slight trickery required, but an entire OS required for a simple build step could be cut out. ~~ Alex
The Mac tax comes from the fact that to buy a Mac you have to choose from Apple's anaemic product line. For the vast majority, the available hardware will be inappropriate, and they'll have to spend hundreds or thousands on superfluous hardware.
Consider that you simply can't get a Mac laptop without discrete graphics, even though integrated graphics are more than sufficient for anyone who doesn't play games. Not to mention a screen that will work with the lights on.
I used to have a powerfull laptop to do development but I figured that, at least on my case, I rather have a powerful desktop and a netbook. I dont need to carry a heavy machine with me and I can always access my desktop via NX when I'm away.
Scientia est Potentia
...with the sole exception of the volume keys. Most of the other feature keys that infest my keyboard don't work as they should, are completely useless or perform tasks that I can equally well do with a few normal keystrokes (and save myself the reach). Even a mouse click or two is a comparable alternative. Same goes for f-lock and the cryptic icons on my function keys.
(I have really old embedded software compilers that only run on 98, and yes I have tried every trick in the book to make them run on Linux),
When you say that you have tried every trick, does your book include installing VMware player (free) and running Win98 in a virtual machine under Linux? If that doesn't work I sure would like to hear how it fails.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I suggest you get a MacBook (Pro or Air if you must) with 4 GiB RAM. Then use VirtualBox to run whatever other OS for which you want to develop.
You missed the "Dissed A Mac" logical fallacy.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
I personally have an HP business laptop. It is 15.4 screen format, SXVGA or something like that (the medium high res, not the UXVGA) which is really nice for looking at code with long line lengths. It also has a docking station option, which I use, that allows me to use 2 external monitors. Dual monitors is extremely useful, but using the laptop screen next to a monitor does not work well - the large difference in pixels-per-inch makes it extremely hard on the eyes to go back and forth between monitors. Better to use two similiar external monitors - which requires a factory docking station that supports it.
I also like the "fuller" keyboard of a 15.4 laptop.
Your singular experience isn't really relevant to a discussion of MBP build quality. To say that they have better build quality is not to say that none of them fail. It is to say that they fail less often than competitor machines. Obviously, with a non-zero failure rate, someone will get the failed machine. So, you pointing out that you have one of the failed machines really has no bearing on whether or not the build quality is better. You tacked on an "IMHO", but it's not a matter of opinion, there exists data to say whether or not they fail at a higher or lower rate.
The best developers laptop is a Thinkpad. End of discussion. There is a Thinkpad model for everyone, and they have the most open-source friendly hardware. There is not a single other manufacturer which provides similiar features in a package as appealing as a Thinkpad. As far as I am concerned, and I have tried to use everything from plastic-fantastic to Dells to expensive Vaios, there is only one option for a serious developer. A used Thinkpad T42, which is in my opinion made for developing software, is to be had for something like $200-$250. A new Thinkpad T400 costs $1000, and a T400s, its slimmer brother and IBM/Lenovos most expensive offering these days, is about $1300.
I've heard horror stories about buying from the lenovo outlet or trying to finagle your way into a return without a restocking fee or something, but I just got done having two unparalleled experiences with them. Bought a refurbished t400 and a refurbished x200 tablet and they are both exceptional, especially when considering how much I paid for them.
Also, although I know several have mentioned many similar things about thinkpads above, first of all the t400 is a great standard laptop. I got mine with a 2.26 ghz dual core, dvd+r dl ultrabay burner, switchable graphics (ati 3470 and intel 4500hd, the intel i assume has acceptable linux support and the switchable graphics work great in windows 7 RTM), 1440x900 LED backlit 300 nit LG matte screen, 9 cell battery for over 7 hours of battery life in power saving mode, a full copy of office '07 and vista business 32 which is eligible for a free W7 Pro upgrade on october 23 all for a total of $660 including tax. This is a steal for the quality of laptop I got. I configured it with the same options as new from their website with heavy coupon usage and it came out to 1000-1100.
There are several reasons why the thinkpad has basically survived all sorts of comparisons to other laptops since I bought it:
1. every thinkpad comes with a trackpoint/ultranav, which aside from being rare on a laptop these days is (if I researched correctly) a trackpoint 4th generation with many improvements over the few competing brands. This is extremely obvious when comparing to the "pointing stick" on a year old dell latitude. Also, I'm not sure but I think other trackpoints may not have the second set of mouse buttons right above the trackpad like thinkpads do. Again, the Dell Latitude I can compare it to does NOT. The middle ultranav button is particularly useful with the ultranav software, turning it into a trackpoint scroll.
2. While my 300-nit LED screen is certainly bright enough to make the keyboard visible in the dark, negating the use of the nice thinklight, it is still nice to have for when you want a light to read some paper documents or read a real book. Also, by using the thinklight to illuminate the keyboard, you can save battery life by reducing screen brightness. I have no idea how to compare to a backlit keyboard in terms of battery life, but I assume it is much less since I've read of troubles involving NOT using the keyboard backlight when it is not necessary.
3.The ultrabay slot I'm sure is a feature on other business laptops, I was actually looking at a fujitsu lifebook and read about its modular bay. Of course, that is a $1800 tablet so let's just say when you can buy an hdd adapter off ebay from hong kong for $15 making the use of two HDDs in a 660 dollar laptop that's pretty incomparable right there. Unfortunately the ultrabay battery apparently dies real quick since it is depleted completely before the main battery so I doubt I'll ever get one of those to have an equivalent of a 12 cell battery in my thinkpad.
4. I'm not sure how ubiquitous this is nowadays, but the latest thinkpads all support sata II 3.0 gbps in the main bay. Right now sitting pretty is an intel SSD at full speed, and a standard 160GB HDD in the ultrabay slot, giving the best of both SSD/HDD worlds.
5. Battery life is great, easily less than 10000(10?) MW when in power saver/intel graphics, giving me 8 hours of battery life on the 80000(80?) MWh refurb 9 cell that came with. Plus, 4 cell batts that sit flush in the t400 to fit my incase 15" macbook fluffy sleeve are $35 on the outlet. 6 cells (sticking out less than 9 cell) are $41 and I don't know how much 9 cells are since mine came with one.
6. the ATI 3470, while obviously not a champion graphics card, plays every game I throw at it except maybe Crysis. I have a quad core desktop if I want supreme graphics anyway. A bonus is that the t400 is one of the few real "lap"tops out there, since even when gaming it doesnt burn my lap like basically every other "notebook" out there. Left 4
i too would definitely recommend a thinkpad. I still have an 1200 iseries which still works just fine (short of the battery being useless and one hinge being broken due to someone stepping on it. Right now i use one of the new w500's. * Amazing keyboard. This was most likely the reason for me getting another thinkpad. not seen its equal. * very solid laptop. the construction is great, virtually unbreakable. * good linux support. most everything works out of the box now, and binary driver gives full 3d if nessesary (i just run of the integrated intel) * amazing resolution. nothing beats 1920x1200 on a laptop, non glossy too. * has bay (never used one) and swapable drive * again, amazing keyboard
The only devs that Macs are good for are Mac devs.
You do realize that OS X is a certified Unix? That means that OS X shares an enormous commonality/overlap with the entire *nix software developing world including AIX, HPUX, Solaris, BSD and Linux. In fact OS X ships with a huge amount of OSS software pre-installed along with Apple's own proprietary stuff and optional developer packages that include a lot more OSS stuff. Apple also contributes to the OSS movement. Macs are also quite popular for all kinds of platform independent and web development. Apple deserves criticism like any other soulless megacorp and their computers aren't the best development machines ever conceived by the mind of man but Macs are useful for a lot more than just Mac development.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I have a Acer 6930 Running win 7 I visualize xp osx and ubuntu and have run 98 as a vm on it as well, with a core 2 duo and 4GB ddr2 It is plenty fast. as a side note I just upgraded to Win 7 from Vista and am using 12% less memory. the 6930 has a proprietary replicator port for docking. I dock mine to a 20 inch monitor and 2 external 500 Gb drives. and a usb Blueray burner.It also has a 16Inch screen and full keyboard fro working on the go. the only down side is that the batery only last 3 hours and the thing weighs 8+ pounds. but the new timeline series has great battery life and almost all the same features.
there are 10 types of people in this world, those who read binary and those who don't. which are you!
A 13" MacBook will fulfill some but not all of the requirements listed by the OP (the major missing one being a dock) for $1,200, and it's relatively easy to virtualize and/or dual boot all three major OSes (Windows, Linux, OS X). What more is there?
BookEndz sells a line of docks for Apple laptops but they look kind of clunky to me. Thanks to the USB hub in my display and bluetooth all I have to plug into my 13" MacBook when I sit down at my desk are the power cord, the Mini DisplayPort connector and the USB root connector which takes all of five seconds so I never felt the need to shell out €€€/$$$ for a dock. What really annoys me about the new MacBook Pro line is the built in battery, 7-8 hours of wifi enabled battery life are IMHO irrelevant. I want the ability to swap batteries without having to reach for a screwdriver and if that means having to put up with squeezing only 4 hours of life out of each battery then so be it.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
If you have no qualms about your current laptop, why not replace the LCD? eBay the model you need and part swap. Could keep you under the 100$ range if you're lucky.
Otherwise, I'm a fan of the T series as others here have mentioned even though I no longer have one (Sister ran off with it). I purchased a Fujitsu P7010D and have yet to find something as capable in the same size package.
You didn't mention your screen size requirements so it's difficult to make a good suggestion.
-=LaptopZZ=-
I could believe the "Macs are used in businesses" troll, but you went too far saying you have "dated a lady".
With as many slashdotters rarely leaving the basement, or attic, I can understand their lack of understanding not everyone using slashdot is an introverted geek who's agoraphobic. Up until an accident while riding my bike, which I rode 100 to 200 miles a week, left me with a disability I was very outward bound. But now because of my disability I don't work, I used to work in concrete construction full time even while riding so much, and spend most of my tyme in my apartment. So I spend a lot of tyme on slashdot. However I'm trying to get back into college and love spending tyme in nature with my camera. I'm actually thinking about trying to start a photography business, but with the recession I'm not so sure that's a good idea.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
A good dual core machine with at least 4gig of RAM works great. Since you said "developer" I, gaming is not an issue. I have a Dell dual core 2.4ghz machine that I run Linux on and then use Virtualbox to run legacy operating systems such as WinXP, Win95, and OS2 for testing/development.
I was amazed at how well VirtualBox was able to support the legacy OS operations. In fact, I also use it to run an older Linux build for building and testing some code for an older server.
I stand correctly. The devs that Macs are good for are Mac devs and Unix devs who have money to blow on overpriced hardware, especially considering that they can get hundreds of flavors of *nix for free.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
*stand corrected
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Get the cheapest that will do the job (4Gb+ memory, at least 2 cores, etc). Anything you get will be obsolete in a year or so and probably broken or stolen long before that.
Watch out for the intel 4965 wireless card. I have a T61 with said card and wireless on the thing randomly stops working when running Ubuntu 8.10 and/or Ubuntu 9.04. Only thing that fixes it is a format. I'm not really sure if they even use these cards in new laptops anymore. The issue seems to be somewhat localized to Ubuntu distros. For the specific error google around for "Mac is in deep sleep". Buyer beware. Other than that little problem Thinkpads have always been good to me, besides the whole drifting nub mouse and occasional loose LCD hinge.
With a MID or UMPC, for instance?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Internet_Device
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-Mobile_PC
the newest Intel MIDs are x86 based, so no real software incompatibilities. They're a shitload less than $1200, and starting next year (early 2010), the new line of Mooresfield-based MIDs will have a vastly improved battery life over what they do now.
Hook up a external keyboard when you need to do hard work and you have a very portable computer for a few hundred $.
See www.midmoves.com for up to date news on the Intel MID front.
I just bought my wife an HP dv7t 17" laptop. Quad core, 2.0GHz Intel, 6GB RAM, 320GB HD, and a gigabyte ATI video card. She loves it. But it costs $1350, weighs a ton, and I think this model is being discontinued (though I'm not sure of that).
On the other hand, I love my MacBook, and the unibody MacBook Pros. For me, after the processor speed, the max memory spec is the most important. Nowadays, don't settle for less than 8GB max. Both the HP and the MacBook Pros max out at 8GB RAM. I haven't seen anything other than the core i7's carrying more.
Get a Sager(or any other Clevo reseller), they are the most amazing developer laptops. They have an upgradable video card, can have a matte high resolution screen (so high that you have to change the DPI), and quad core and core i7 processors. And its all upgradable and relatively inexpensive.
They are just a no brainer for gaming and developing.
The build of some laptops may suck but some are pretty sturdy. I think a lot of it through is what laptop have to go though. Now I'd like it if Apple were to make some like Panasonic's Toughbooks.
I had a cheap ass Gateway laptop that lasted me for 4 years
My first 2 laptops were Gateways. For the first one I had to replace the harddisk drive 6 months after I got it. Then 2 weeks shy of 1 year I called tech support after it crashed. The tech walked me through some tests then said the motherboard had to be replaced, so he arranged Airborn Express to drop off a box I'd pack it in then they'd pick it back up and ship it to the repair facility. A week later I called back asking about it, I was told they had a shortage of one part and it may take another week or two to get. Two weeks later I called again, and I was told it was just dropped off. I didn't have it and it wasn't left for me there. After going to the apartment office to see if it was dropped off there and calling both Gateway and Airborn back Gateway decided to send a new laptop. All together I was without a laptop 4 weeks.
The second Gateway I bought was a remanufactured laptop and like the first I bought Gateway's extended warranty. A few weeks later I got out of my car at home and grabbed the laptop. Walking to the door I slipped on ice. Now I was holding the shoulder strap with the bag along my side, so it wasn't more than a foot off the ground. When I got in I opened the bag and laptop and saw the monitor, I don't recall if it was an LCD or an LED, was cracked. Obviously I called tech support, and even though I paid more for the expended plan it was not covered. So I asked how much it would cost to repair and all they'd tell me was "between $200 and $1200". With all the trouble I had with Gateway's service, including having to wait a month to get a laptop back, I decided I would not give Gateway another penny. And besides the 2 laptops I also bought 2 desktops.
a friend's Macbook died within a few months. On the other hand, I've seen Macs last for years and "pc's" die after a few months.
Maybe it's a lottery. I recall many, many, years ago Zenith manufactured computers, before selling the devision to Group Bull in France. The joke was that if a Zenith computer had any problem in the first month it would always have problems but if it didn't it'd last years.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
That's the reasons why I do stuff on Apple:
If you have some more questions, reply here, I will follow.
The first and most important consideration is to use an older laptop. If you must use a newer one, check to see if it has a 'trusted' BIOS, and if it does then you should throw it under the drive dual axles of an intercity bus or a heavy gravel or asphalt truck....twice. Then check if there is a 'cpuid' function in it and keep the machine only if the sending of cpuids can be absolutely disabled. .. er! Oh yeah, almost forgot, IBM made an OS that the world has forgotten about, OS/2. They had conspired with micro$$$%^&$*@# at one time to use that in combo with the PS/2 IBM pooters to forcibly take over the computin world by monopoly storm, but first the clone boys moved in to make the PS/2 look like the low quality piece of crap it always was; and then micro@#$%$$$ stabbed IBM in the back by withholding the sound software solution that they came up with that would have fixed OS/2 and made it a capable OS. Micro$$$ knew that the key to success in business would be to make the OS play games that office Dilberts could play behind their supervisors big fat asses. Early windows games even came with 'boss keys'. OS/2 developers never solved the inability of OS/2 to play sound at any decent rates. Too busy straightening their ties and kissing ass trying to keep their jobs. So when micro$$$ dropped the other knive in IBM's back and took their code and left their partnership of evil with IBM and brought out Windows95 back in 1994.7, IBM was caught flatfooted with their pants down and their 'you know what' hanging out....all 2 inches of it. NOBODY uses OS/2 any more, so it should be malware FREE! Same with AmigaDOS
Then load it with SuSE 9.0 with KDE 3.1 and kernel 2.4. This will guarantee that you have a functioning shredder. Better if you also use ext2 as the operating system. All newer stuff is spyware as Torvalds sold out to the governments and megamonopolists with the advent of kernel 2.6. All excuses for not having a shredder are lies meant to deceive the foolish and the pseudointellectuals and republicans on which education is a wasted enterprise. Need not go into details of these lies except to say that they are pernicious and have another side. You cannot find a decent shredder on the net for any kernel 2.6 linux although many exist for windows boxes. On the premise that what is good for the goose is good for the gander, the anti-shredder fanboys, to quote the editor of MaximumPC mag, a fanboy and sockpuppet for Win7, are proven to be capable putzes having the chutzpah to on one side of their mouths spew anti shred propaganda against linux but at the same time say nothing about windows being all the more secure because of the presence of a shredder. For this reason if you cannot obtain a SuSE 9.0 or any distro of kernel 2.4, then you should use win98 or at most win2k. Win Millenium is OK too as it was a short lived ole boy and not much malware got written for it. As for Win98 version 2, there is probably not much malware LEFT out there looking for it so it is a good bet too as there are several good anti virus and anti malware progs that were made for it before micro$$$$ forced everything off the market but its damned 'office' program suite and a few monopoly 'shooters'. Also you could get into the low level machine language routines with win98 with programs like 'PC Tools' which at that time would let you do just about anything with a file, living and/or dead. Of course, with windo$$ you had to buy everything, but still that is not as horrible bad as working with a MAC where even basic system ware had to be bought. Course since I am: 1 not 'registered' so that Cmdr Taco can have my ass shipped to see his friend Mohammed Dustem in Africanistan to be tortured; and 2 not a praiser of monopoly capitalism and its' penchant for spying on people...and by the way the cpuid controversy was heated back in the nineties; therefore this post will probably be severely censored, have errors put in so as to make it sound stupid, etc, or just get a low score or be put at the end so it never gets displayed to any but the most determined reading slash
Expressing my personal opinion is not a logical fallacy. Reporting my personal experience is not a logical fallacy.
anecdotes are cute, but they don't serve the overall discussion; no matter how relevant they are to you personally.
the point is: apple hardware has the overwhelming customer satisfaction, customer service and build quality data that matters when these topics are brought up. statistically significant data trumps online pissing, always.
unless you are developing exclusively windows apps/content (and maybe even then), apple's make the most sense. the only serious developers who write them off are those that don't have a grand to spend on a computer. and then how serious can you really claim to be if you can't afford that?
serious developers switch TO apple/OS X, but not back. except as a publicity stunt. or to be a fucking curmudgeon.
Someone hasn't been keeping up with Apple's products it seems. After the outcry in the beginning of the year with the glossy only displays on the MacBook Pro's, Apple actually listened to their customers and brought the option back. You can get matte on the 15" now as well. The 17" has always had the matte finish option and never lost it even with the switch to the unibody design (unlike the 15" which did become glossy only). The 13" is the only one which does not have a matte option, but I don't see that model as being pertinent for the poster's requirements (aside from cost). For development work, you want that larger screen so you can have multiple files or applications open next to each other for writing code (like the program's design document, or API, or even a test window, etc.)
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
BookEndz has MacBook/Pro docks.
you'll want to cough up 50-100 for more RAM before too long if you go this route I think
Apple's RAM prices are outragious. I've even had employees suggest I buy more RAM from someone else then install it. And the handbook that came with my MBP from Apple tells how to add RAM.
make sure you have maxed out the RAM (can make a very big difference)
Yeap, sometimes adding RAM can speed up things. I'll probable do that before I replace my MBP.
take a good hard look at SSDs that may fit your budget. A good SSD will completely change how you use your machine
For a 17" MBP a 256 GB SSD cost $650 more, and that's the biggest they have now. I use more storage than twice that. Now what would be nice would be to have both an HDD and an SSD. The HDD can be used for mass storage while the OS and swap partition is on the SSD.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Apple contributes to open source generally because they've been beaten over the head with the fact that not everything is BSD licensed.
Safari, when it came out wasn't compliant with the license (LGPL), multiple notices that they weren't in compliance and eventually, I believe, threats to sue were required for them to release code, as well as what they released being one great big diff. So useful. To be fair, they have gotten better over that particular case (KHTML/Webkit) since then.
Saying that they are a good OSS citizen, would probably be pushing it. (Mostly they seem to follow the idea of doing the minimum required, unless it turns into a PR problem.)
most of us are too stupid or just too busy to ever bother figuring out where "whom" was supposed to be used.
Such as For Whom the Bell Tolls"? Usage does change, sometimes for the good and sometimes it's not good.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Now mind you, I'm not an official developer by profession these days, but I spend a good deal of time at work doing web-dev and at home coding C++ apps for personal amusement, but here's my 2c:
a) As mentioned, definitely drop that floppy in favor of a few USB sticks or (even better if you have a cardreader) the built-in cardreader and some SD cards. One additional note though, if your projects are big or you anticipate lots of storage may be needed, make sure the card-reader does SDHC. If you need floppies for legacy, a USB floppy drive works nicely
b) 17" can be a bit much, and definitely adds weight. If you're going for more portability, try a 15" supporting higher resolutions. Heck, even my TX2500 with a 12" screen at 1280x800 is OK. When sitting, have an external LCD, and make sure you have a video card that can manage multiple screens with a higher-res external nicely (randr, twinview, or some other). Some cards don't do anything other than "clone" mode nicely...
c) Extra hard drive? An external drive works quite well on an as-needed, and cuts down on power consumption and bulk. Having extra USB ports and ones that deliver good power is very helpful there (some machines require a dual-USB connector to sufficiently power an external 3.5" USB drive).
d) An extra battery may or may not be needed depending on how you trim up with the above.
e) RAM, 4GB is not uncommon or unaffordable, and really can make a performance difference when you have large projects and many apps open
f) A decent (and decently supported) graphics card is important if you're doing 3d work. Newer ATI's seem to be OK since AMD took over (mine works just find in 'nix), but some stuff still seems more Nvidia-centric in linux-land.
g) If a CD/DVD drive isn't always essential, one can dump that for additional savings on bulk/battery and opt for a slim external (or just pop it out when not in use if you can do so).
and yes I have tried every trick in the book to make them run on Linux
I am using powerful "Acer" desktop in my office and small "Acer One" netbook with XP for travel. For my netbook I have "Orange Internet Everywhere" mobile Internet connection (3G, etc.), which costs 56 Swiss francs per month (about 55 US dollars) and works in almost all civilized countries.
So I can work on a normal computer with a large monitor in my office, still I can take with me everywhere the small light netbook and connect to Internet at any place, even in the woods and mountains.
Despite its small size I can install on the netbook all the soft, which I can install on a desktop. And I can travel really lightly and have the netbook about me all the time.
I found out that the size matters. I bought also an excellent Panasonic G-1 camera, which is also of a small size, but is of good quality due to the new technology replacing a mirror box inside a camera with digital technology.
Not necessary anymore to have a martyr's look of a business traveler carrying, speaking figuratively, a cross, an enormous laptop bag, a huge camera holder over airports. I travel with a backpack which looks empty, but contains my whole office and ready to connect at any moment. As opposite to asking "how connect to you WiFI? Is there an empty table to place my laptop on it? etc."
hundreds of flavors of *nix for free, yet none of them run iMovie, iTunes, iDvd, Photoshop, Illustrator, Aperture, Lightroom, Visio*, Word, Excel, an Exchange client or a dozen other business/personal critical apps for normal human beings.
Do a check - last time I priced a Dell with comparable hardware to a Mac, they were MORE expensive, not less.
I own a lovely Sony Vaio, and ditched it for a 24" iMac which was _cheaper_, faster, ran OS X not Vista, so could do more with less, and supported Apache/Postgresql/PHP/Java without serious pain. It has a better screen, a nicer keyboard, better Bluetooth support, good networking (ever try to get WebDAV to work properly on Vista, or bring up the network neighbourhood screen and not wait less than several minutes?) an excellent built in backup solution that doesn't suck balls, firewire 800 so my external content drive doesn't take forever to transfer large files, which apparently USB sucks at, wireless that actually works (still waiting for wireless to work properly in linux distros), and actually syncs with media players without patching the kernel, or installing really stupid software.
I'll run linux when linux devs stop building more MP3 players and start working on apps that people actually need. I'll run Windows when Microsoft stops re-inventing the wheel every other release and focuses on bringing a stable easy-to-use environment to me. Have you noticed that OS X gets better with each release? What an amazing idea! They add _more_ functionality, _more_ (useful) apps, _more_ performance, _more_ stability, and the upgrade is $50 for a whole family and I don't need a degree in computer science to install it successfully.
Linux on the desktop will never happen until somebody with lots of money comes along and makes it happen. Oh wait - that's Mark Shuttleworth at canonical, and linux on the desktop is still years behind OS X.
The question isn't why would you buy a Mac, it's why wouldn't you? So they cost more. I save the difference in a single week of productivity gains.
Everyone is living in a personal delusion, just some are more delusional than others.
Windows 98? Jesus slashdot no wonder you think windows sucks. And there is no way Im using an over priced less featureset macbook over a Lenovo or even a Dell lattitude for the features and price. The Leonov T series are great.
Re: ant, try Netbeans.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
The EEE is very useful when I'm out of office for a small trip or for a meeting. The 17" laptop is practical when i have to work all the day in the customer office. I can't really chose one. Both have some advantage
I fix laptops for a living and Macs don't seem to be any more or less reliable than other brands.* This is based on fixing around 80 laptops a month.
The main issue is that they are a bugger to work on when things go wrong and the parts are about 2x the price of Acer or Toshiba parts. Sony is the only other brand that rivals them for that.
* Every HP made in the last few years has the nVidia chipset failure problem so they have around a 100% mortality rate after a year or two. Toshibas all seem to get clogged up with dust after a few years and start to overheat, but no brand is immune to that. NECs seem pretty solid and reliable. Acer are also good and parts are cheap (available direct from Acer). Asus are really hit and miss. Advent and Philips are both PC-World own brand (Philips whored their name out) and are cheap rubbish. Packard Bell are nothing special. Thinkpads are very solid and reliable, and parts are generally not too expensive.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I own a latitiude e 6400, and it is a GREAT machine. It has hardware VM and the drive bay is hot-swappable, but I don't think that dell has much for it just yet.
I would look into them on the dell business side of the site.
You can work with any Apple product perfectly, because they come with Steve Jobs magic, that will make any of their products perfect in every way no matter what. It could reboot every 2 min, but still never crash. It could be doa, but still be the nicest thing to have on a rack ever. It is just soooooooo (mhmhm) perfect.
Have you ever thought how you make the PERFECT Apple fanboy? Glossy screens are so bad, and Apple is a really stupid company for putting them in (like everyone else, but I have seen Apple put them in desktop lcds, and I have yet to see Apple even offer the option of non glare). But if glossy is fine, Apple is not stupid. So glossy must be fine.
tight VNC
TightVNC requires an Internet connection. The obvious way to get an Internet connection while riding a bus or otherwise away from a hotspot is 3G. In my country, 3G data service for a PC costs $59.99 plus tax per month, for a total of $1,439.76 plus tax over the minimum 24-month contract. You're already over the $1,200 budget, and you haven't even bought any hardware.
Us poor students have to work using only a thumb drive , while we live in a rolled up newspaper in the middle of the lake.
I've done the same with the Samsung NC10, which is similarly specced. I have the same resolution, which I thought would relegate it to just my travel needs, but I develop on it just fine and don't even switch on my desktop at the moment. I have a USB hard drive for entertainment, an external monitor for watching movies, and a USB mouse. Does the job. Runs standard Kubuntu install perfectly. Wifi worked out of the box. My desktop is normal over-the-top gaming spec but without games I'm surprised how little I actually need. The 8hrs+ battery life I find essential though.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
I have a Fujitsu and in terms of features, it's the best there is. Boots from everything, pen drives, cars, external HD, you name it. It comes with a 2nd battery as an option, 3g card, N wifi, fingerprint reader, and lots of whistles. If you're looking for a good laptop that it's not built in china. you're going to the right place: http://store.shopfujitsu.com/fpc/Ecommerce/buildseriesbean.do?series=S7220 Cheers
I run Linux. I bought ATI because they support open source, but have been very disappointed with their drivers, and the open source drivers aren't great either.
I used the closed source driver because I can play 3d games. I can view more than 1 screen, although in windows both of my screens are rock solid, while in Linux there's flicker on one. I know I'd be able to fix it on Linux BUT... ..the reason I am down on ATI is that I have probably spent FIVE days of my life dicking around, trying to get their drivers working with X, and I am not going to spend any more of my limited number of days on earth dealing with this sort of thing. Every time there is a new version of Ubuntu I have had to go through the same stupid waste of time, trying to get everything going satisfactorily again. I like open source, I write open source, I support businesses that support open source, but the next time I have a problem with my video card, I'm going to throw it away and buy a rival card.
Sadly ATI do not support open source enough for their support to be truly useful. Nor do they make great closed source Linux drivers.
Linux stuff might run on Macs but Mac stuff doesn't run on Linux
I recommend you considering the HP EliteBook (formerly known as Compaq), these machine a solid, well made and meet about every request you mentioned. BTW you can get them way cheaper than retail price and they do have a 3 year warranty.
I was using a Unibody MacBook Pro for development some time and it wasn't for me - I could not even get 2 USB dongles (One for the JTag ICE MkII and One for USB Serial Dongle) to fit in the 2 awfully closely placed USB ports on the Unibody. Forget about external drives.
So the Unibody went to my wife and I got myself a HP 8530p - it came with a docking station and 19" monitor for free!
It has 4 conveniently placed USB ports, one e-SATA port for attaching external drive, and the docking station offers a whole lot of other ports - including a serial one! It has a perfect 1680x1050 resolution, ATI Radeon HD 3650 GPU and Intel 5300 Wifi - which means I can run Linux if and when I wanted to without the proprietary mess and still hope for decent 3D in coming months. If you need, it can be upgraded to 8GB RAM. It gives me around 4-4.30 hrs battery life which is pretty decent for the powerful machine.
So to sum it up it is a pretty good laptop for development.
I don't think you're going to find an internal floppy drive. Just not going to happen.
The Thinkpad optical drive bay used to support floppy drives, but that doesn't seem to be the case on modern products. It does support a wide variety of optical drives or an additional battery. No memory card reader, but my T500 has an SD slot built in. (I think it's SD, I've never used it.)
There are models that can have dual hard drives but I think they're the expensive ones. I'm not sure what the benefit of that is anyhow.
As a business-oriented laptop it supports a docking station.
With the accessories you want, you might get a mid-range one for $1,200. I'm really not sure. I didn't see the bill for my T500.
But I'd challenge that anyhow. If you're replacing a current work laptop, you should have a budget similar to what that one cost. (I'm assuming this is being paid for by your company, not you.) I doubt the one you have now, with accessories, was less than $1,200, and that doesn't account for inflation.
But all I can really suggest is spending a lot of time shopping. Look at HP, Dell, Gateway, Lenovo, Toshiba and see what product lines they have match your needs. I'm pretty sure some of the Dell line can do dual hard drives and batteries in the optical drive port, but I don't know about the rest.
And don't expect Windows 98 to run at all. You're going to need some sort of virtualization for that. I use VMware, but that's because it's the product I know. You may find that the performance of Linux and Windows 98 virtualized on the new laptop is as good as native on the old one, and for all the grief we give Windows here, you're going to have an easier time with drivers for Windows for brand new hardware than with Linux.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
Well when you use the adjective "best", you pretty much eliminate a claim to "cheap".
And at $1100, a 13" Macbook has been ideal for my purposes. It's usable on an airplane. Powerful enough to run all of my development kits. I can kick off Linux and Windows XP when I need to target those platforms (especially handy when the boss needs a new build and I'm 3 time zones away at a conference.)
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Depends on your definition of a "good OSS citizen." In the scary government research/mad scientist corporate research market BSD licensed code is ideal. We *can* use it, because releasing our source code would, in fact, violate either DMSO or corporate licensing arrangements.
There's more than one way to skin a cat, and frankly when our company makes something that we see as useful, but not a core product, we do release it and/or submit patches back to whence it came. I just like not having some idiot ramrodding us for not giving proprietary information out to our competitors.
(And why Tcl/Tk is under the hood of many secret squirrel projects.)
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
IMHO, aside from the ridiculously-low price point you cited, the very best choice for your requirements would be the Dell Precision Mobile Workstation line. If you can't do that then consider a Dell latitude E6500. You'll get faster processors from Dell than you can buy from Apple at any price, as well as far, far more expandability and also much faster GPUs.
If you can forgo the expansion and can put up with the one-button trackpad (with it's crappy 'virtual' second button) then by all means go with a Macbook Pro. I like their notebooks a lot but the single-button trackpad is a deal breaker for me, and the cost and availability of replacement parts (they usually want $700+ for a replacement motherboard) is simply a seal on that dealbreaker.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
T Series - bulletproof, robust, great with Linux, go forever. Also IBM/Lenovo provide fantastic replacement manuals giving descriptions of how to disassemble the unit step by step. I repaired an old T23 the other day and it's fantastic. Also, Thinkpad Docks are great and cheap. I have a dock at home and at work and just shuffle the machine back and forth. Never looked back.
Forget all the specs of your previous wonderful setup. The world has changed, and those specs are now irrelevant. In fact, forget specs. Period. Carefully observe what you do on a daily basis, in hours per year. Then get a machine to help you do exactly that, that doesn't require messing with. From your description, I'd recommend 1. Get a Mac for future daily tasks. Darwin isn't bad at all for a Linux fan; no need to dual boot. Get things done, don't waste your life futzing with hardware or software UNLESS you want to *develop* FOSS. In that case, but only then, get a decent Linux box. 2. Get an external cheap display for your old laptop (turning it into a stationary computer) so you can boot Win95 to run your legacy compiler when you need it.
I stand correctly. The devs that Macs are good for are Mac devs and Unix devs who have money to blow on overpriced hardware, especially considering that they can get hundreds of flavors of *nix for free.
It's because we're too well paid and our iPhone apps pay for our iPhone addictions. After all, a Toyota or Honda is over priced compared to a Ford or a Chevy... yet some how people prefer the Toyotas and Hondas... I wonder why?
Why would someone for whom a $599 Dell is sufficient want to pay $1,150 for the cheapest MacBook?
Any laptop meeting the screen size, processor speed, memory size, and hard drive size will work. You can use a virtual machine for Windows 98 and you won't need to hot swap anything, or replace anything when it's off either. If you have a terrible program that requires a floppy drive because it took it's lessons from the Windows XP install, the virtual machine should take care of that for you.
Or did they just want an upgrade? Was there anything wrong with them that a reinstall of Windows wouldn't fix?
Hey I thought Mac zealots were going with 'Infidel', not 'Heathen'! Heathen is so... dark ages
:-)
Infidel!
Here's to the crazy ones
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/321957-321957-64295-3740645-3955549-3784202.html These are nice notebooks, and with the ultra life battery that attaches to the bottom you can get up to 12 hours of battery life.
Um... You can get both a 13" and 15" Mac laptop with integrated graphics. The addition of integrated graphics in the 15" form factor was one of the things I liked about the last refresh. Even if you get a higher end 15" model or the 17" model you still get integrated graphics in addition to the discrete graphics so while you can't avoid the cost of the discrete graphics on these higher end systems you don't need to suffer the battery penalty discrete graphics brings. The discrete graphics adds maybe $100 to the cost of the machines it's on and at $3200 AUD for the cheapest Mac laptop with discrete graphics it's hardly an unbearable cost if you decide you don't need it.
Compared to the PC world, Apple certainly does have an anaemic product line but you can't force them to make a computer just for you. Apple makes premium machines so they're always going to cost more than merely average machines. If you don't demand a premium product, look elsewhere. Personally, I find the PC world to be a sea of bad to mediocre products. Sure they're cheap but I don't want a fat machine, or a machine that flexes when I pick it up, or something that's unreasonably heavy. Perhaps there are premium PCs out there but I haven't seen them for sale around here.
You just don't see them that often because people don't want them. The PC market provides what people demand. Apple provides what's Apple wants to sell.
I am currently using a Lenovo T400 Which has a great deal of the features that you are looking for. It allows for dual monitors (which I use all the time) It has a hot swap drive slot which will accomodate a CD/DVD RW, Hard Drive not sure about an extra battery however I seem to get about 4 hours out of the one battery I have with the IBM battery Miser that is built in. You can get an awesome docking station with pretty much everything you are looking for and I am booting win2000 (I know it's not 98 but I don't have a copy of that to give it a try), winXP, and Suse Linux. It has 2 Gig of Ram a 180 Gig drive and a Intel Centrino Duo core running a 2 GHtz and a Radion HD 3400 Video Card. This machine does great for me and it is in your price range as well (I picked it up for a little over a thousand but it looks like they are going for 749.00 http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087¤t-category-id=19C791A03AF24034A0011B825513BCED/ now.
I ordered a Dell Studio 15 filled to the brim with Blu-ray goodness (ie. I took the stock config and added a BDROM, opted for the 1080p LED screen, and an ATI Radeon 4850 for decoding). While it plays Blu-rays brilliantly, the keyboard -- I am not making this up -- lacks a BREAK key. There is no way to hit Ctrl-Break on this laptop. Dell opted for some stupid multimedia function key where BREAK would normally go and there is NO ALTERNATIVE. Without ctrl-break, debugging on this machine is essentially not an option. And the best part is, it can't be remapped because ctrl-break is a three-byte scancode (all others are two) and cannot be remapped in Windows.
So, do NOT get a Dell Studio 15. I recommend Dell, but not that one. If you go for a Dell, make sure to look close-up at the photographs of the keyboard, and don't buy a model without a Break...
You completely missed a point I made. With my Mac, I can develop for Mac, *nix, OR Windows, any time I want. No other platform will do that, unless you want to struggle to try to get every single one of your Windows development tools and IDEs running under Wine. Good luck with that.
The single best laptop ever made.
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2864
Pros:
The only drawback to the T60p is that they are discontinued, and Lenovo no longer carries the IPS LCD. Why not? Because the suppliers realized they could make more money using the technology to build TVs than replacement screens for laptops. More information from a Lenovo insider. And if the suppliers aren't making them, Lenovo can't sell them. Simple as that. You can still find them (rarely) on eBay, but they are some of the most price-drop-resilient laptops ever made.
I'm writing this on a $700 Core Duo I bought in 2007. It's not my primary workstation, but that only set me back $1200. The closest equivalent Mac is almost three grand, and has less RAM.
I stand correctly. The devs that Macs are good for are Mac devs and Unix devs who have money to blow on overpriced hardware
What makes Macs "overpriced"? Are you one of those people who think that value of a computer can be determined by staring at a bunch of specs that are listed on a piece of paper?
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Then it is comparable to anything else also sufficient for the job.
I'd argue the opposite, that the $599 Dell is likely to be more pleasant to use for most people. Few people really want 13" laptops.
And I'm writing this on a $700 Core Duo bought in 2007 that I'll be loathe to upgrade because it has a proper, angled keyboard.
Apple has a government sanctioned monopoly on OS X. That's the whole point; Apple specifically blocks the free market PC hardware ecosystem.
Sony's laptops don't let you enable intel virtualisation cpu technology even though the hardware is present. Apparantly they did a deal with intel to get the hardware cheaper if they didn't allow virtualisation. Wouldn't be so bad if their laptops weren't about the most expensive you can buy.
Sony don't have much support for 64 bit Windows drivers.
The dual graphics technology also does not play nice with Linux.
The z11 screens rub against the edge of the keyboard.
They like to turn themselves on when they are in your bag.
The Z11 hard disk drives are difficult to change.
N.B. Some of this can be fixed by hacking the EFI BIOS but who wants to do that.
Languages don't compile. Compilers compile languages.
I was using "language compiles" in the sense of "language can be compiled by a compiler". If there exists no public compiler from language A to instruction set B, then language A does not compile to B.
I just received a thinkpad W500 with 8gb of ram from my employer. It is amazing, big screen with 1900x1200 res, fast processor, loads of ram, and Ubuntu 64bit runs great. The only major issue is the ATI graphics chipset, which is not super linux friendly - but with the right about of massaging works just fine. This machine replaces a macbook pro, and I don't look back at all.
You argued that Apple was subject to a free market, and I pointed out that they are not. We can argue back and forth over whether copyright is a justified imposition on the market, but it's indisputable that it is an imposition.
ThinkPad T400s is your best choice!
Though some do. There's not really a core developer spec list, aside from a decent serving of RAM, a reasonably fast processor, and as big an LCD as possible.
Not that I'd argue against discrete graphics in a developer workstation (especially when I'm not the one footing the bill ;). For my part when I do pay for it, I buy decent graphics chips on workstations and have so far done without on notebooks, though that may change in my next upgrade cycle.
I don't really understand how that's not obvious.
Dell can sell something functionally equivalent to a Thinkpad, so yes, there's a mostly free market for "Thinkpads". Dell is legally prohibited from selling something functionally equivalent to a MacBook.
It should take you about two seconds to find them. Do your own homework.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Oh, and you need to look up the meaning of "hypocrite" while you're at it. You clearly don't understand what it means.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Voila, your computer has typed in the program for you, without anything more than a keyboard interface on the target machine. Sorry that I can't take credit for the idea, but the good thing about it is that it will work with any computer that has a keyboard and a copy of debug (and all versions of dos shipped with debug). Nice way of getting around security when they've filled in the USB plugs, removed the optical drive, etc. (But if they think that disabling serial port in the bios and pasword-protecting the bios works, just use debug to set the ports to their proper non-zero addresses in the bios, and you should now have working serial ports again).
TAMTOWTDI
I recommend buying a refurbished Fujitsu Lifebook laptop... a model A6220 or better, directly from Fujitsu. Cost is around $500.
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As I said, I'm using a laptop I paid $700 for over two years ago. A new $599 laptop would be an upgrade for me.