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Comment by serf | Hacker News Reader

So, be inconvenienced in every aspects important to a dev but gain a bit of confidence in your machine (as long as you trust Big-G)?

verified boot seems like the only advantage here. You can buy an ebay business-grade laptop with TPM for 40 bucks USD readily, and they don't require reliance on Google or the requirement that one uses a neutered OS. (yes, yes, it's secure. It's a users' platform. Development on chrome OS at this point is an act of masochism.)

If secure travel is your thing, stash your data on a cloud provider and pull it later after you arrive at your destination. Go whole-hog and travel without an SSD and buy a cheap one at your destination with cash. Sprinkle in some libreboot for more confidence.

It'll still be cheaper than a 200 dollar chromebook, and you probably won't have to deal with some of the worlds' worst chicklet keyboards.

P.S. don't travel with a yubikey that isn't partnered with another. Would be a bummer to lose.

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Cloud restore is the other big win here. You don't have to roll your own and it just works.

That's why the author has you setup a new account so that you can segment your burner data from your real life.

Syncthing does this for me. I start it, click on one of my other computers, select "introducer" and everything copies back exactly where it was.

Sub $200 Chromebooks with decent keyboards: Dell 11 (2014 & 2015 models), Asus C202SA, and maybe the Lenovo educational models. At higher prices, of course, you have many choices: both Pixels, Lenovo and HP 13" and the Acer 14 for Work (all last year), the new Asus C302SA.

The Dell 13" is regularly discounted.

I am not saying you're wrong but I'd like some advice on what to buy. The x220 I've never seen dip below $100 with 4GB RAM and a hard disk or at least a caddy.

Thank you for your help.

You can fInd x220 in not very good condition for 100 to 150 usd. And even a x201 is ok for development purposes.

> The x220 I've never seen dip below $100 with 4GB RAM and a hard disk or at least a caddy.

ThinkPad caddys are dirt cheap. You can buy third party compatible caddys for under $10. [0]

In terms of a laptop with a reasonable build quality that includes a TPM, pretty much any corporate laptop will suffice. X220's command a premium because they're ThinkPads.

If you look at other options, something like the Dell E6220, which is from the same generation as the X220, can be purchased used for around $100. [1]

They don't support coreboot, but they're otherwise reliable machines. The Dell UEFI implementation supports only allowing signed updates and SecureBoot. Depending on your threat model this might be enough for you.

> You can buy an ebay business-grade laptop with TPM for 40 bucks USD readily

You'll have to buy something older than the E6220 mentioned above, but the Dell E6400 is available for $40. [2] That will have an integrated TPM.

[0] http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thinkpad-X220-X220i-Hard-Driv...

[1] http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Latitude-E6220-13-3-Intel-Core-...

[2] http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Latitude-E6400-Laptop-Core-2-Du...

If you want the literal 40 dollar laptop I had in mind, look around for an X60/X60s/X61.

They are old, but they are well equipped and I love their keyboard feel, plus TPM and all that jazz.

Their specs are pretty low-end nowadays, but I find that devs have too varied a range of preferences and tasks to judge what they need too readily.

If you're sitting in a huge IDE or photoshop or otherwise have a strong need for heavy lifting and high resolution during your travels, however, these cheapy business-grade laptops from yesteryear are probably a poor choice.

But I sit in emacs and IRC most of the time with music on -- they are perfect for that.

https://arrowdirect.com/

Get a dealer account and you get 20-40% off the listed prices. I applied and got the account in about a week or two.

"Grade A" refurbs are in really good shape.

Cheapest X220 (Grade A) right now is $153.60 ($192.00 list).

You can get a Acer 14 refurb for under $200 which is a good dev machine using Crouton with ChromeOS. Nothing else is going to be able to touch this. Sounds like you are just not up to date what is now possible with Chromebooks.

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