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?"

Comments

Re:ehh

[Hortensia Patel]

Build quality? Really?

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.

Macs may have their advantages, but IMHO build quality is not one of them. You know, to be brutally honest.

Re:Thinkpad T-series

[bemymonkey]

My experience regarding the customer service has been largely the same (although my Thinkpad is a cheap SL500 consumer series model), but for the price, I'm relatively satisfied with the hardware. The casing is feels cheap, the keyboard flexes a little, and there were a few internal mechanical problems (mainly cables not placed in the proper channels causing PCB stress+flex, and other stuff like that) that I had to fix myself before deciding to keep the machine, but in terms of build quality and important features (decent keyboard, awesome pointing device, wsxga+ on a 15.4" TFT) it's still better than anything else I've found at this price point ($800)...

Never having seen a modern T-, W- or R-Series model myself (I've only used older ones like the T4x and T60/61) I can't offer an opinion regarding those, but just extrapolating from my experiences with the SL500 (which is, as I mentioned above, the cheapest entry-level Thinkpad line - not even considered a real Thinkpad by most long-time Thinkpad users), I'd expect them to be better than other devices in their price range in terms of durability and input options.

Re:To Mac or Not

[ThousandStars]

I switched a few years ago and couldn't be happier.

This has been true for a while, and even before Apple switched to x86; see, for example, Paul Graham's March 2005 essay, The Return of the Mac :

All the best hackers I know are gradually switching to Macs. My friend Robert said his whole research group at MIT recently bought themselves Powerbooks. These guys are not the graphic designers and grandmas who were buying Macs at Apple's low point in the mid 1990s. They're about as hardcore OS hackers as you can get.

The reason, of course, is OS X. Powerbooks are beautifully designed and run FreeBSD. What more do you need to know?

I got a Powerbook at the end of last year. When my IBM Thinkpad's hard disk died soon after, it became my only laptop. And when my friend Trevor showed up at my house recently, he was carrying a Powerbook identical to mine.

For most of us, it's not a switch to Apple, but a return. Hard as this was to believe in the mid 90s, the Mac was in its time the canonical hacker's computer.

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?

Consider a Dell Latitude E-series.

[MrCrassic]

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.