Comment by lelandbatey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lelandbatey | Hacker News Reader

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Something I do want to note: everyone seems to only ever look at two, maybe three companies for "serious" notebooks: Dell, Lenovo, and (maybe) HP. However, I've found that by far the best company to buy laptops from is Asus.

The latest example of this I've seen is the Asus Zenbook UX305LA. The specs are:

    8GB Ram
    256 SSD
    Intel Core i5-5200U
    1080p IPS display
    A keyboard devoid of obviously poor layout[0]
    Nice large multi-touch trackpad[0]
    Weighs 2.86 lbs (1.29 kg)
    8+ hours of battery
    Full out of the box Linux compatibility
    ---------------------
    Price: $750

It seems to have an absolutely killer set of features at a great price point, and this seems to be a trend with Asus. My current laptop is an Asus TP300LA, with nearly the same specs (though thicker and heavier), and it sold at the same ~$700 price point two years ago.

I highly recommend people look to Asus for their standard "programmer machines".

[0] - http://cuttingedgenotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AS...

My two last laptops have been from ASUS. No complaints, no problems with reliability, decent trackpads and generally solid builds (not Apple-solid, but they are also not Apple-priced as you point out). For a while, they were the only company making decent 13" with discrete graphics.

The thing that I found incomprehensible, and somewhat tangential to the grandparent, is how ASUS manages to screw up distribution so badly. They release slightly different models at slightly different times in different geographic regions, and it is usually impossible to buy, say, the European or Asian versions, in the US. A year ago I was quite literally ready to throw money at them in exchange for a UX303LN to replace my aging U36SG, but my dream model was only available in Europe. The only two options I could get in US both had something wrong with them. Repeat: they actually manufactured a laptop to the exact specifications that I wanted, but didn't give me a way to buy it.

Considering they have global distribution channels, it don't imagine it actually being hard to make all models globally available, so the only other explanation I have is forced market segmentation: the two models available in US were pretty much the lowest and the highest end, with nothing in the middle.

I had been waiting to see if UX303UB will make it to US, or if it will suffer the same fate. Instead, I just pre-ordered a Surface Book.

There's more to a laptop than just its theoretical performance. It also needs to be reliable and tough, light-weight, ergonomic (good keyboard, touchpad that isn't touched accidentally), cool (otherwise CPU & GPU might be throttled), etc.

And to add to that, how repairable if something breaks?

I've found the general quality of Asus machines, especially the zen book to be exceedingly poor when trying to come off of a MacBook Pro. The touchpad and keyboards typically are horrible. That's what matters to me more than ram or Cpu.

which ones? The zenbooks have been pretty sweet, accurate trackpads, decent keys, although personal preference is hard to really nail down. build quality pretty good, screens could give you 1920 matte screen even back to their 2012 iterations.

the out of the box linux compatibility is a game of chance on those. you have half the models with shitty broadcom cards. a third with the only atheros cards they can find without any drivers and the remaining with an intel card for this month and realtek after that.

it's just a pain in the arse to find one that you can reliably recommend. and 1920x1080 is still a shit resolution.

I used a laptop with a broadcom card 2-3 years ago; it worked for me.

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