Ask HN: What's a good quality modern non-Apple laptop to buy on a medium budget? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's a good quality modern non-Apple laptop to buy on a medium budget?

5 pointssdegutis17 comments

Looking to replace my MacBook Pro which was about $2400.

I just do web development, so I don't need anything too powerful. Most of all I just want good quality hardware.

Something that uses Windows 10 and doesn't have bloatware would be nice. Supporting dual-booting with Linux would be a great bonus.

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Web Development . . .

Get a macbook air 13" $950 at best buy right now, it's occasionally down to $850. (Not non-apple of course).

I got a new Dell for a windows specific project that was around $1500 and it's track pad is unusable except for very basic use. I dread using it vs the macbook air.

Also if you venture in to Rails or Laravel doing things with VirtualBox and the terminal just don't work properly on windows. Granted with enough trouble shooting and googling you can get them to work . . . but on a mac they just work . . . saving tons of billable hours per year.

Don't switch . . .

The base model macbook air has more than enough ram/power for web development . . .

Add a 24" monitor (asus $150, blue tooth trackpad, and bluetooth keyboard if you need more screen space, $10 thunderbolt to HDMI, amazon prices).

Good luck in 2016.

Most of us are frustrated with the decline in OS X over the last few years. But I will say to you what I say to all my friends and coworkers that make a switch...See you back in a few months!

Why did they switch? Mostly they miss their Apple-specific software I'm guessing?

1. Trackpad

2. Trackpad

3. Battery life

4. Ease of web development software installation (rails, laravel)

5. Better quality software

I just switched to Apple. In a short space of time I hate using non Macbook laptops. They're horrible!

If you want something that runs linux well (I currently have Cent OS running on mine, and it comes pre-loaded with Ubuntu), I'd say System 76 is a pretty good choice. Their 15.6" version is pretty beefy ($1400 base), but even their 14" model looks good right now ($800 base). The model I use is a few years old, and is holding up really well. They have native drivers for pretty much everything, even the hardware switches are supported through the BIOS if I remember correctly, so when I loaded up other distros, nothing was a problem.

Windows pretty much runs on everything, but my work computer is a Lenovo/ThinkPad T540P. It's base is $800, but the version I'm running is optioned out to about $1500-1800 I think (Core i7 (4 core), 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD). Great computer, I've had about 14 vm's running in VirtualBox running on it at once before memory started becoming a problem (again, with the optioned out specs). (also, I run Windows 7 Enterprise on this, so may be YMMV with Windows 10).

both of those are superb, though I guess neither really competes build-quality wise with my 15" Macbook Pro Retina. I end up using that for almost anything that I don't need the GNU C/C++ toolchain for, which ends up being most stuff anyway.

Depending on what "medium" budget actually means, the Used Thinkpad Guide:

http://ktgee.net/post/49423737148/thinkpad-guide

Sweet link.

By medium budget I meant somewhere around $1000

Are any used ThinkPads powerful enough to run Windows 10 smoothly?

Yeah, that's no problem unless you start looking into the <$200 or maybe <$300 range.

For $1000 you can get a new Thinkpad X1 Carbon(Gen3). Lighter than a Macbook Air but specs comparable to a Macbook Pro. I got one recently and have dual booted Linux and Windows 10 on it.

The Dell XPS 13 is the best-built Windows machine I've seen for a while, even though it is a Dell. Here's a good review: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-13-9350-InfinityEdge-U...

There is a new model coming out soon, so you might get a discount on old stock.

I have colleagues with this, and it is pretty slick.

I second a Dell XPS-13.

I've been using the Dell XPS range since 2012. I've had 2 Dell XPS-15, and last years Dell XPS-13(the newer one is even better).

I only use Ubuntu, so i just replace Windows(eventually, might keep it around on dualboot for 6 months or until the next Ubuntu release). It's a breeze to use. The only time i've had problems has been the shutdown/suspend sometimes get stuck. Other than that i've not had any issues. The hardware like wifi, graphics all worked without me doing anything.

I do web development on a 2012 macbook air and a 2008 iMac. Both of them run on SSDs and that's all I care about really with just 4GB of ram.

I know people working on a LAMP stack with 16 GB of RAM desktops/laptops. I am not sure what they're up to with all that RAM hanging over their desktop while they run a 300MB RAM worth stack.

I'm one of those people. I run fleets of VMs to model the environments that I'm working on accurately. Doing that with 300MB of RAM would not be possible.

I'm eyeing a surface book as my next laptop; I particularly like that it has a stylus to draw diagrams with.

I have Chromebook Pixel LS 2015 running Ubuntu, if 13 inch screen is not too small for you - this one is a little power beast with top notch build quality.

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