Ask HN: What notebook is cool for development (hard/software)?
I'm tired of Apple and I refuse to buy a Retina MBP. What hardware is out there that is worth to buy? What OS do you install on it?
Not all laptops created equal, so yes, you can probably find decent hardware. It will inevitably be priced similarly or above the Mac alternatives. So no gain in HW department.
Now consider OS. I have to use win7 desktop at work, and have to maintain my wife's win7 laptop at home. Both are orders of magnitude worse than ubuntu or osx.
And any decently built laptop comes with Windows preinstalled and manufacturers rarely care about other platforms. Good luck fiddling with the 3d graphics and wifi drivers. I'm not saying it's impossible to set it up, and maybe it's much easier today than last time I've tried 2-3 years ago. Maybe it's not too bad.
But still, is it worth it?
And btw, please share your experience, if you try any of the alternatives suggested here. I'd love to find a good alternative to my MBA. But for now I just don't see a point in trying.
I definitely wouldn't get this thing for traveling though. It has terrible battery life. If I had my way, I'd get an ultrabook like sputnik or something else. The specs for the ultrabooks aren't quite there yet.
In general, I'll just suggest lenovo as the macbook alternative.
What sort of hardware dev are you doing? I end up running a VM for much of my work.
This is coming from a former die-hard MS guy turned Apple fan boy. It's like Apple took what I love (*nix) and just made the best desktop experience for it. Yeah, I hate the prices but even the hardware is unbeatable--what I've seen so far that is.
However, I'll always still be searching for a true Linux desktop OS and appropriate hardware for it that doesn't feel like it will break if I carry it around with one hand while open.
I find this extremely uncomfortable, especially when working on a surface I can't adjust to optimum height. For example, at a conference table, many cafe tables, and the like, the laptop is "too high" and that front edge -- so far from the keyboard -- presses into my bent wrists. Ugh.
I'd stick to either the t-series or x-series but don't go buy anything tonight since new models will be out by the end of this month or so with much improved displays and haswell.