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Comment by JohnTHaller | Hacker News Reader

You haven't looked at Windows laptops in a long time. You can get a 15" 1080p laptop with 8gb of ram and a 256gb SSD that gets 10+ hours of battery life for just north of $500 now.

Here's an example with all that plus a dedicated graphics card for $549: https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-E5-575G-53VG-15-6-Inch-Wi...

Or without the dedicated graphics for $470: https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E16834315779

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As counterpoint, that same $500 will get you a Chromebook that's exceptionally thin and light (0.5" thick, 2.3 lbs), has a high resolution retina display (12", 2400x1600 pixels), 10+ hours battery life, and touchscreen with pen input and Android app compatibility: http://www.samsung.com/us/computing/chromebooks/12-14/xe513c... Compared to a giant 15" clunky, hot, loud, low resolution display Windows laptop it's a night and day difference.

Yes, but with a drastically slower CPU, half the RAM and 1/8 of the disk space that Chromebook is not a usable developer machine without an additional server on which to run compilers, database systems, etc.

You're essentially buying a very high resolution ssh terminal + documentation viewer for your $500.

And you also still have to connect to remote servers to collaborate with other developers, run your SCM, CI/CD, servers, etc...

If you can do your editing locally, and connect to something more beefy when needed, whoopty do. It depends on what your needs are. Personally, a really nice screen and touchpad are huge features for me... at home/work a physical switch keyboard (buckling spring or cherry-mx browns)... who cares?

I want more, you want more, but there's no need to poopoo on someone else for not aligning with your own sensibilities.

Not including RAM, CPU and disk space in a cost comparison because your work doesn't require much RAM, CPU or disk space is fine. I don't poopoo anyone for not having these requirements in the first place.

But not including RAM, CPU and disk space because they're on a server somewhere makes absolutely no sense.

SCM and CI/CD are irrelevant for the comparison because they cost exactly the same whether you use a Chromebook, a Windows laptop or a Mac.

My point was, I'd rather have the cheaper, more easily replaced device with me, and connect to something more powerful as needed.

If its OK to play the "why not double the price" game then at $500 you're getting close to why not get a mac laptop for $1K?

because he wants to be productive, not "work" on twitter and facebook all day.

I am in the Mac camp (as mentioned upthread), but I think there is a serious risk here for Apple. That $550 Acer has the same amount of memory and an as large SSD as my new 2016 MacBook Pro that is Euro 1699 new. Plus a dedicated graphics card. Of course, the MacBook will have a better quality, but the price gaps between MacBooks and similarly spec'ed laptops are getting quite large.

Currently, a Mac or not is not a question for me. I prefer macOS with such a wide margin over Windows and Linux (for the desktop) that I am willing to pay the premium. Moreover, macOS has many applications that I like and are not available on other platforms (OmniGraffle, OmniFocus, Alfred, Tweetbot, Pastebot, etc.). However, after trying WSL I for the first time had the feeling that Windows could become an alternative to consider.

It's a direct response to this incorrect claim: "There are Windows Laptops with good 10+ hour battery life (e.g. Thinkpads). But they aren't a "little more" they're $1K+"

They aren't $1k+. They're literally a little more than the $400 Chromebook.

You can buy a perfectly usable Chromebook for $170.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019G7VPTC/

With a low resolution 720p screen and only 2GB of RAM and less than 10 hours of battery life. You can buy a similarly equipped Windows laptop for $199 or less, or with a more usable 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage for 30 bucks more. Of course there are both lower end Chromebooks and Windows laptops, but they're really beside the point to what's being discussed.

Windows is much slower on such a low spec device than ChromeOS. And if you install anything on your Windows device, god help your loading times.

Even low end devices are shipping with SSDs now. The last time Windows 10 was slow for me it was either because it was still on a 5400RPM drive (brand new $900AUD PC from a retailer...) or because Intel had tricked a whole lot of ODMs into thinking the Z series Atoms were desktop processors rather than for mid-range smartphones.

In fairness, the low-end $200 laptops have emmc storage, which isn't what consumers think of as SSD. Yes it is solid state and faster than a hard drive. But it's not typical SSD performance like you get on the $400+ laptops.

True - and it's really hard to judge eMMC performance because of high variability between models/brands.

eMMC 5.1 (introduced in Jan 2015) has read speeds up to 250 MB/s and write speeds up to 125 MB/s. They're much faster than the earlier eMMC chips, as well as laptop hard drives. Sadly, the early slow chips kind of gave them a bad reputation. They're perfectly workable now for a low-end machine.

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