laptop choice for developers
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I have 2 choice, and not a lot of budget
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an i7-6700hq laptop, with 32GB RAM, and lousy battery (Lenovo Ideapad 700 with SSD and beautiful screen)
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an i7-6500u, with 8GB RAM, SSD - great battery life and lightweight. (Dell Inspiron 13 convertible )
with (1), I can load up 2 or 3 VMs, plus Android emulator like DuOS, put sql server tempdb in ramdisk. work, play and experiment. I could also load my VS project folder in ramdisk.
with (2), it gives me great mobility to do my work anywhere, just no VMs. just work. no play, no experiment
Which would you pick ? and Why? Will I see noticeable performance gain if I choose 6700hq over 6500u ? (visual studio finding text, compiling, starting iis express, debugging etc...)
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I would think it would come down to where you're wanting to use it. If realistically you're going to be pretty much always in easy reach of mains power, then go for the Lenovo. If you're wanting to use it off-grid on a regular basis, you'll need the battery life, so go for the Dell. If you're not certain whether you'll want to take it mobile, I'd proceed on the assumption that you will; I think it'll be easier to adapt to the memory limitations than it will to cope with poor battery life if you do decide to use it on the move.
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@Nick-Chan-Abdullah said in laptop choice for developers:
Which would you pick ? and Why?
How much do you work away from an outlet? How much do you value screenspace?
Any choice that you make will be a tradeoff. There is no way around that. There is no cheap, high-quality laptop, that has a 24" display, folds to 4"x6", weighs 2oz and has a 200 hour battery life while supporting 2TB of RAM and has a 2TB SSD at a budget price.
I can only ask you what I ask my people: How often do you work remotely? How much do you work away from an outlet?
If you never work remotely, get a desktop. It will be cheaper with better performance.
If you work remotely occasionally, and the tradeoffs are worth it to you, get the one that has shitty battery life but a larger screen.
If you work remotely all the time, need long battery life and work away from an outlet constantly, get the lower performance but longer battery life option.
Don't make unnecessary tradeoffs. That is stupid.
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@Scarlet_Manuka said in laptop choice for developers:
I would think it would come down to where you're wanting to use it. If realistically you're going to be pretty much always in easy reach of mains power, then go for the Lenovo. If you're wanting to use it off-grid on a regular basis, you'll need the battery life, so go for the Dell. If you're not certain whether you'll want to take it mobile, I'd proceed on the assumption that you will; I think it'll be easier to adapt to the memory limitations than it will to cope with poor battery life if you do decide to use it on the move.
Also, what this guy said, since it agrees with me. :p
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I agree with whatever @Polygeekery just said!
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Or go with the one with shitty battery, and buy a $30 battery that isn't shit.
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thanks all for the response. much appreciated. i think the biggest factor in my choice is whether the i7 6700hq (quad core) would actually improve visual studio and sql server performance significantly, compared to i7 6500U version (dual core)
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13 inch laptop for development? You're crazy.
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@aliceif currently using Surface Pro 10.6". So 13.3" is huge upgrade for me heh
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@Nick-Chan-Abdullah said in laptop choice for developers:
@aliceif currently using Surface Pro 10.6". So 13.3" is huge upgrade for me heh
You're using a Surface as a dev machine?
Get a machine with a decent keyboard. It will be an improvement.
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@aliceif said in laptop choice for developers:
13 inch laptop for development?
It can work, provided the pixel density is large enough and you pick smaller font sizes. What usually matters is the amount of information that you can pick out, not the size of the dots used to draw it. Not that I've got room to speak really; I like having my larger laptop screen. :p
Though I wouldn't go with a 10" system for development unless I was really going to always be coding while in airline coach class…
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@Polygeekery said in laptop choice for developers:
You're using a Surface as a dev machine?
Get a machine with a decent keyboard. It will be an improvement.The Type Cover 4 is good enough if you're on a train/plane, and you can connect a decent keyboard when you're at home/work.
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@asdf said in laptop choice for developers:
The Type Cover 4 is good enough if you're on a train/plane, and you can connect a decent keyboard when you're at home/work.
Seconded. The Surfaces have the additional feature that you can actually remove their default keyboard (i.e., the Type Cover), so that it's not taking away space when you have a decent keyboard at hand.
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@Nick-Chan-Abdullah you described thr 2 well enough, not much to add here
if your work were like mine, I rarely take my work laptop out of my desk, so the first one is an obvious choice.
at home, there was a time I would carry it around all the time, so the second one could be good. but you said the first one can play games. that would depend of how much available time I had for games then
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@aliceif 13 is the minimum possible size I'm willing to program on. Yoga series ftw!
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@aliceif said in laptop choice for developers:
13 inch laptop for development? You're crazy.
Any laptop bigger than 13 or 14 inches is too big.
If you want to do work on it, you plug in a monitor. Nobody can do serious development work on only one laptop monitor, even if it's a 17" laptop. Therefore, a 13" laptop is sufficient.
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Thanks all for the advice. As i was about to go to the mall to get a laptop, i did a search again on the dell inspiron. Suddenly a website shows a new version of inspiron 13 5000. I was confused, it looks exactly the same as 7000 series and cheaper too. After much digging i found out that it has two ddr4 slots, no pen input. So i upgraded to 32gb ram and im happy with my decision
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@blakeyrat said in laptop choice for developers:
Nobody can do serious development work on only one laptop monitor
Maybe if you didn't use a complicated IDE…
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@Nick-Chan-Abdullah said in laptop choice for developers:
So i upgraded to 32gb ram and im happy with my decision
Good. Being happy with your decision is important, otherwise you'll be annoyed for years.
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@dkf Yes. If you give up all modern convenience and work like it's still 1974, then I guess all you need is 320x240 resolution.
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@blakeyrat Not all languages need an IDE. Those that don't can work quite well with somewhat smaller windows, and you can get several of those on a 15" screen just fine.
I wouldn't describe C# as one of the languages that you can avoid using an IDE with. Other than in the most technically-correct-is-best-correct anal-retentive way.
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@dkf said in laptop choice for developers:
Not all languages need an IDE.
Languages aren't sentient, they don't need anything at all.
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@blakeyrat all they need is love, love is all languages need
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@Polygeekery said in laptop choice for developers:
high-quality laptop, that has a 24" display, folds to 4"x6", weighs 2oz and has a 200 hour battery life while supporting 2TB of RAM and has a 2TB SSD at a budget price.
Want.
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@Polygeekery said in laptop choice for developers:
high-quality laptop, that has a 24" display, folds to 4"x6", weighs 2oz and has a 200 hour battery life while supporting 2TB of RAM and has a 2TB SSD at a budget price.
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@fbmac you fucker, stop mentioning me and deleting your comments
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@Magus said in laptop choice for developers:
Yoga
seriespants ftw!
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@bb36e said in laptop choice for developers:
@Magus said in laptop choice for developers:
Yoga
seriespants ftw!That only works for certain individuals. (Let's just say there are a few running dog agility courses that should not be wearing them)
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@Polygeekery said in laptop choice for developers:
There is no cheap, high-quality laptop, that has a 24" display, folds to 4"x6", weighs 2oz and has a 200 hour battery life while supporting 2TB of RAM and has a 2TB SSD at a budget price.
Forget the cheap price. Where can I buy this ? ;)
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@Nick-Chan-Abdullah IMO, for compiling software the HQ is mandatory. I'm a little curious to what your budget actually is, but maybe look at the Latitude 14 5000? You can get that with a 45w processor and it's still a fairly light 14" laptop.
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Just fucking give in and become a macfag. I have an ace laptop, I will just ignore the low numbers in my bank account.
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If you're going to spend most of your time with the notebook chained to your desk then go for whatever meets your needs.
If you are expecting to lug the wee beastie around with you every day and provide remote support from the parking lot behind Burger King whenever someone breaks all your stuff before breakfast, then go for the lightest thing you can find. An ASUS T100 can (technically) run Visual Studio and an Android emulator. Just maybe not at the same time. But if it's something you will be carrying everywhere then your spine will thank you for it by this time next year.
You also have a third choice, which is to go with an underpowered ultraportable for carrying around, and a fancy desktop to leave on top of your desk for when you're doing real development. Bonus points if you already have all of the VPN infrastructure required to securely access your desktop from the Burger King parking lot.
Of course, if "I need to do development on the road" really means "I need to play No Man's Sky on the subway", then you're going to need the monster notebook anyway.
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@DCRoss said in laptop choice for developers:
If you're going to spend most of your time with the notebook chained to your desk then go for whatever meets your needs.
If you are expecting to lug the wee beastie around with you every day and provide remote support from the parking lot behind Burger King whenever someone breaks all your stuff before breakfast, then go for the lightest thing you can find. An ASUS T100 can (technically) run Visual Studio and an Android emulator. Just maybe not at the same time. But if it's something you will be carrying everywhere then your spine will thank you for it by this time next year.
You also have a third choice, which is to go with an underpowered ultraportable for carrying around, and a fancy desktop to leave on top of your desk for when you're doing real development. Bonus points if you already have all of the VPN infrastructure required to securely access your desktop from the Burger King parking lot.
Of course, if "I need to do development on the road" really means "I need to play No Man's Sky on the subway", then you're going to need the monster notebook anyway.
Your third option is great advice if the portability is just for unforeseen events where a phone screen won't cut it.
I have a Vista bricktop that lives in my car for sudden problems. The Lenovo letters have mostly fallen out of the lid. It's just powerful enough to do things with the added bonus that no-one in their right mind would want to steal it :)
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@Nick-Chan-Abdullah Zounds, how did you manage to get your profile icon as a link to Facebook?
I'm sure everyone else can see it, but since Facetubes are blocked, I get to witness Chrome's broken image image!
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@blakeyrat said in laptop choice for developers:
Therefore, a 13" laptop is sufficient.
I was looking at laptops recently--good luck finding a decent yet inexpensive one that's not a tablet in that size range. Everyone only seems to want to make 15.6" and up, or else Celerons.
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Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb: It rubs the lotion on its skin. It does this whenever it is told.
Catherine Martin: Mister... my family will pay cash. Whatever ransom you're askin' for, they pay it.
Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb: It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.
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@lucas1 said in laptop choice for developers:
It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.
🚒? Don't want to get burns...
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@Tsaukpaetra Silence of the lambs quotes are wasted.
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@lucas1 said in laptop choice for developers:
Silence of the lambs quotes are wasted.
I recognize that it is probably a quote from a movie, but obviously I interpreted it wrong (I don't watch a lot of movies) or my attempt at humor has failed again.
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@Tsaukpaetra It had the characters' name in it!
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@lucas1 said in laptop choice for developers:
It had the characters' name in it!
So (stick with me here, we're going Hypothetical mode), if one had never watched Star Wars and somehow managed to avoid all the hype around it, would this still be your reaction if you had posted a line that read:
Darth Vader: I am you father
and said one botched the reference?
How is one who didn't watch the movie itself (but is barely intelligent enough to recognize that, yes, it's probably from a movie) supposed to recognize a subset of information from said movie (i.e. character's name)?
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@Tsaukpaetra It doesn't really matter and I don't really care.
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@lucas1 said in laptop choice for developers:
It doesn't really matter and I don't really care.
Clearly not, based on your prior responses. ;)
@lucas1 said in laptop choice for developers:
It had the characters' name in it!
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@Tsaukpaetra Rubbish jokes go as rubbish jokes go , into the bin of history.
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@dkf said in laptop choice for developers:
I wouldn't describe C# as one of the languages that you can avoid using an IDE with. Other than in the most technically-correct-is-best-correct anal-retentive way.
You can do C# without an IDE, the question is... why would you?
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@powerlord Is VS Code an IDE or a Text Editor with plugins. I am working on a mac fine for personal stuff without the heft of VS