My laptop died yesterday, recommendations? | Hacker News Reader

My laptop died yesterday, recommendations?

6 pointsgharbad20 comments

My old gen 1 macbook finally reached an unusable state, and I'd like some recommendations on a new machine. I'd also be interested in hearing what the crowd uses for day-to-day hacking.

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Macbook Pro with a SSD drive. I always buy refurbished ones at the Apple Store:

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac

The SSD drive is huge. I got my first one with my Cr-48, makes a world of difference. I would add 3g if possible.

If you don't mind doing a little surgery, I'd highly recommend doing the SSD swap yourself. I recently did it on my current gen MBP and it took about 5 minutes to do the actual swap and then another hour to get everything reinstalled. The biggest advantage is that the swap is much cheaper (I paid $170 for a 120GB OCZ SSD vs $300 for the Apple one) and the actual SSD performance is better as well (from my research Apple uses Toshiba which are decent, but the Sandforce based ones, like the OCZ one, get the best performance out of the non-SATA III drives).

I'll second that. Even the next step of taking out the optical drive isn't too tough, at least on a pre-unibody white macbook. Runs a bit hot/loud with 2 drives though.

I love my Thinkpad. Can't do without its trackpoint (I hear more laptops have them now). It is extremely strong. I dropped my laptop from 6-7 ft and nothing happened. It has a protection layer behind the screen.

I have a new macbook air with a SSD.

Can't say enough good things about it. I mainly do mobile development, so the lack of horsepower doesn't bother me so much, and it's just so dead quiet and light.

Macbook Pro.

-THE strongest and most rigid case I've put my hands on (the unibody alumnium)

-UNIX kernel

-OSX and iOS development

-More options for OSs

-No major issues with current models

Sure, you might not get the most processing power for your money, but all things considered, the overall product is much more better than competitors'.

I own 2 MacBook Pros (switched from Dells running WinXP and Win 7) and love them both. As you know, setting up printers and other connections are so easy. The machines are powerful to handle my development needs, including running Parallels with a Win 7 client to run SQL Server for dev. I recommend those machines.

Yes - refurb is a great idea. One of mine is refurb (over 1 year old now) and the other one was new (6 months) and both work great.

I have a ThinkPad x100e with Arch Linux on it and am planning on moving to the new x120e. Think of it as an open source macbook air :)

Small, powerful, replaceable components, user serviceable, etc. I have several macs but I'm more than happy with this as a day to day, runabout laptop ("notbook").

I boycott Apple, so I have no opinion on Macs.

I had fantastic luck with a Gateway I bought 5 years ago that is just now showing its age because the hinge is busted. At the time, it was their "platinum" model for developers - 2 gigs of RAM and one of the first Core2 Duo's. Sadly, they don't make an equivalent anymore that I know of, so to replace it I went with a cheap HP that I will pass to the wife later this year.

I am saving up for a System76 machine that I'll get myself over the summer, as I've heard good things about them and run Linux wherever possible.

thumbs up for the system76 pangolin, ive had one for over year. was lucky enough to get one with an nvidia chipset, theyre using ati junk now.

no comment on the gateway.

What's the battery life like?

One thing that annoys me looking for laptops, is the ubiquitous 1366x768 resolution. At least the pangolin has a 1600x900 screen.

Macbooks are great dev machines. I am also a huge fan of the ASUS UL30VT, which runs Ubuntu smooth as butter and about $500 cheaper! I own both machines. Check JR if you're interested in the ASUS.

JR?

http://www.jr.com/

It's an electronics store in NY

Yup. They sell them on Amazon too but they are significantly cheaper at JR... the UL30VT that is.

A friend who just joined the Linux Foundation saved $400 or $500 on a Lenovo with the Linux discount. They don't advertise the exact discounts publicly, but if you were joining anyway, or already a member, that could be something to pursue.

Oh - also Greg Herlein is selling a decent one:

http://blog.herlein.com/2011/02/selling-my-linux-notebook/

he's on HN as Herlein I think...

If you don't want to spend a ton on a laptop but want a decent machine, get a dell latitude D820 used on CL - you can get them for as much as $300 - runs ubuntu great.

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