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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?"
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.
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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.
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.
The reason I could never take MAC seriously for any sort of business is lack of docking ports..
My old machine (loved it).. IBM T41p.. still one of the best laptops ever made - though out-dated
My current developer machine.. Dell Precision M4400.. 2.53ghz quad-core.. not huge, durable, RGB LED 1920x1200 screen, docking port, display port (can present using display port to dvi adapter), XP 64bit.. great for virtualization
It drives me nuts to see how often MAC gets recommended as a laptop.. Sure.. it's the nicest one you see at Best Buy.. But no corporation should ever consider using laptops that don't have docking ports.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
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.
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.
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see that the submitter mentioned what type of development he's doing. If he's trying to do game development, virtualization may not be ideal for him. However for anything else I'd agree with you - except I'd personally choose a Mac as my "root kit" (as opposed to a rootkit I guess) and run VMware-based instances of Windows, Linux, et. al.
As an aside - anyone have experience with how well the EFI-enabled grub (or any other bootloader that can run on a modern Mac) works?
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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.
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.
It's about the 50th comment recommending a Macbook, despite the other 50 comments noting that a Macbook doesn't qualify for any of the OP's needs. It's a shame that buying a Mac comes with an EULA demading you work as a freelance PR agent for Apple. Also, it's a shame that you morons will recommend buying a Mac even when it blatantly isn't fit for the job.
no corporation should ever consider using laptops that don't have docking ports.
This advise is just silly. I work for a large corporation (10K+ employees) and Mac is fully supported in every area of the business (along with PCs/Windows). I know it's really hard to plug 3 cables into the very accessible ports on the side of my computer every morning when I get to work, but somehow I manage.
So, let's not say "no corporation should ever" about anything. There are tradeoffs with most anything. Where you may want a dock, other people like me couldn't care less (I actually prefer not to have the extra hardware on my desk).
I think in general the "Macs are bad for business" argument died about 5 years ago. It's simply not true anymore. On the contrary, I find myself far more productive on my Mac. The computer I had before at the same company was an HP NC6220 running XP. It was a nightmare.
Mark A. McBride -- OmniNerd.com
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.
The Value Line lacks the nice ThinkVantage tools like System Update, gets rid of the Trackpoint in most cases, the spill free keyboard in most cases, and the keyboard and trackpad aren't as good. As much as I enjoy saving money, playing with a VL for a few minutes convinced me to continue buying ThinkPad.
- oZ
// i am here.
I am with Goldberg. MacBook Pro has very good Intel hardware, which means it is inherently a very nice Windows machine. Better hardware than a PC at the same price? When actual comparisons have been done (as several magazines now have), as opposed to FUD, it was found that the price difference was surprisingly little. Macs do tend to be a little more expensive for the same electronics, but at the same time their physical engineering is superior (that is something that is not under much dispute). And Mac hardware is probably more thoroughly tested together as a unit than any brand of PC. The beauty of the Mac, though, is that together with good hardware, you get the best of all worlds when it comes to software. I can (and do) boot up Windows so that it runs natively on my Mac, at full hardware speed, or, if I don't need all the speed, I can start the same instance of Windows up, fully functional including Internet connection and I/O, in a VM under OS X. And as far as OS X itself is concerned, I essentially have a Linux machine, with all common Linux tools available to me, with the additional plus of a superior UI. (Superior to Linux, that is. It is debatable whether the UI is superior to Windows, though some people feel that it is.) So, yeah... a MacBook, or at least a MacBook Pro, is indeed a superior developer's machine. Arguably better than any PC, because it gives you many more options. Want to use Windows for something? Go ahead. Want to use *nix for something? Go ahead. Want to use OS X for something? Go ahead. And they run Windows natively just as fast as a PC with similar hardware. I have Linux-style development tools, and Windows development tools, and OS X development tools, all on my MacBook. And I can even use them at the same time if I want. (Though the Windows tools will run a bit slower in a VM, but that is just the nature of the beast.) That is something that PCs just do not do... or at least definitely do not do well. So, no... unfortunately the "best" development notebooks will cost you more than $1200. If you are stuck with that budget, you are stuck with that budget. But you sure are missing out.
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see that the submitter mentioned what type of development he's doing. If he's trying to do game development, virtualization may not be ideal for him.
If you're doing game development for Windows 98, I'd say you have much bigger problems...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Most of the "benefits" of the extra swappable drive bay are nullified in newer laptops.
Here's his list: CD/DVD R/W, extra battery, floppy drive, extra hard drive, memory card reader, etc
Floppy drives are obsolete
Since this is a developers' machine, a 17" should have 2 drive bays, so who needs to swap out drives? Failing that, use an external USB drive.
Memory card readers are built in nowadays.
If you're going to be lugging an extra battery around, just carry a spare.
So just go with the built-in DVD R/W, built in 4 USB ports, built-in 2nd hard drive, built-in card reader, etc. A grand should get you all this, including 4 gigs of ram and twin 500 gig hard drives.
So, instead of picking a machine that works, you pick a machine that doesn't have the features you need, and then run another machine, thereby using power, needing a fast network connection and has it's own set of issues. No thanks, I'd rather get a machine that has virtualisation support in the hardware. It'll be faster, cheaper and a better quality solution.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
You are implying that a Macbook or a "PC Laptop" are Compal or Quanta laptops with different badges on them. Which is not the case. It's irrelevant which manufacturer is used - you might as well say that they are all made in China for the difference that makes.
I'm happy with 1440 x 900 for a 17" laptop - but I've seen the same model, but with a lower-res screen - 1280x800.
The question I have is how much squinting at fine fonts I'd do at 1920x1200 on only 17" of screen - it's great on a 26", but can't see it being that good on a 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 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.
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My laptop (thinkpad t61p) has a 15.5 inch (I think) screen and 1920x1200 res. I love it. Sooo much workspace room. Everyone that walks up to it whines about how small it is, but rarely do I ever care what other people see on my screen - in fact, it's usually not their business. Everything is small, but that's not stopping me from having a 10-point font default. I guess I just have good vision...
The reason you need to swap the battery is because there is no external power to plug the thing in to.
I'll leave taking a laptop with some holes drilled in it and some wires connecting it to an external battery pack though said holes through airport security for you, thanks.
When actual comparisons have been done (as several magazines now have), as opposed to FUD
What magazines have done is irrelevent to me against comparisions *I* have done, for myself, using hardware configurations I care about. You can swing numbers all over the place depending on what options you want, but without fail, I can get the machine I want from IBM or Dell for significantly less than I'd get from Apple. I'd also get a keyboard and touchpad that doesn't make me want to kill myself.
at the same time their physical engineering is superior (that is something that is not under much dispute).
How is that not under dispute? What criteria are you using for this? I personally think Macbooks feel flimsy and I'm hardly alone in this. And as noted above, I loathe their keyboards and touchpads. I find their screens to be generally inferior unless you want to pay a HUGE, ENORMOUS premium for a resolution that isn't 1200 by Suck. In short, I find Apple's engineering to be pretty damned horrible. And I'm not alone in that either. There are millions who will complain about this stuff and more.
a superior UI. (Superior to Linux, that is. It is debatable whether the UI is superior to Windows,
All three of those are debatable. You will find people in every camp who think one of those three is far superior than the rest. I think Gnome is an excellent, highly usable, unobstrusive desktop. I think Windows is obnoxious and in my face all the time, and I think OS X is a bunch of shiny crap that does nothing but get in my way and has a one-thing-at-a-time mindset that is counterproductive.
Really, your statements are delivered with authority but have no substance behind them. None of what you claim is axiomatic actually is axiomatic. And I could easily supply anecdotal evidence that shows that Macs are great at running OS X, but generally suck wind when it comes to running Windows or Linux, but anecdotes prove nothing. The fact is that Macs are no better than anything else when it comes to "a developer's machine", and are quite often worse, depending on what, precisely, you intend to do with it. But one thing is for sure -- despite your claims to the contrary, they do carry a hefty pricetag.
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What magazines have done is irrelevent to me against comparisions *I* have done, for myself, using hardware configurations I care about.
How is that? Because you don't care about the hardware configurations Apple offers, that means they are overpriced on a 1 to 1 basis? That makes no sense. No Apple does not offer the variety of hardware options most other manufacturers do. No they don't make low end laptops. But that isn't Apple's problem. If I go to McDonalds to get a taco and can't because McDonald's doesn't sell tacos it doesn't mean anything is wrong with McDonald's it mean I'm the dumbass for trying to get a taco at a place that doesn't sell them. Try to get a multitouch trackpad from anyone else.
Its all well and good if you don't need a backlit keyboard. I don't give a fuck. But it is a feature Apple offers and some people like it and assign that feature a value in dollars they are willing to pay over another laptop that doesn't have one. Same for the built in long life battery. Same for the top notch LED panels in the displays. Same for the aluminum case.
If a few hundred bucks causes you to type HUGE ENORMOUS maybe you need more education so you can get a better job. Regardless, Apple isn't interested in your business, obviously, because they don't offer low end laptops.
Also update your troll. IBM doesn't make hardware any longer. And who thinks an outboard battery is a good idea? Lets make it a regular laptop footprint and then hang half the battery off the backside, that'll hook people. A battery that doesn;t last as long as my MBP's.
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.)
Ditto on that. And I'd just like to add that we have a macbook at work for porting. It is easily the worst platform to code on for one straight reason: everything is done the Apple way. Libraries are in weird locations, a variety of things are never updated properly, makefiles just don't work on half the time because Apple wants you to use their awful IDE or rewrite your makefile in some obscure way. Perhaps the worst aspect is the Apple OpenGL support. Apple uses some sort of bizzaro wolrd implememntation that behaves completely different from every other OpenGL distrobution out there. As it is we can literally update our windows port by over-writing the .cpp and .h files from the updated version we coded in linux to teh windows visual studio project, open up VS and rebuild it. At worst we get a few UTF8 warnings and perhaps a minor "MSVCC doesn't support that feature" which requires a few simple alterations. Porting updates to the Mac almost constantly ends up with the software operating completely differently from every other platform, textures go weird or lighting will be reversed all the sudden etc. At this point we are actually thinking of dropping official OSX support completely as it has proven to be such a total drain of time to constantly adjust things we really shouldn't have to be touching at all. I'm seriously hoping Macs just go away again and we can go back to just worrying about Linux and Windows interoperability.
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.
Try this on a Dell - As likely to crap out on wake-up as not... and yes, seen SHITLOADS of Dell laptops do this, even my brand-spanking new E6400.
You are describing manufacturing defects. Those do not imply problems with the engineering. Lots of PCs have manufacturing defects, too, that are equally unrelated to the engineering that went into them.