New Laptop
I have had a desktop my whole life, but I really want to buy a laptop so I'm not relegated to working in one space. Given that I'm on a budget and I'm just starting to learn to program, what is the best "bang for my buck?"
That said, there are 4-5 (tops) companies in the WORLD making notebooks: all the choice you see in the shops are about branding and artificial product differentiation. ECS, Acer, Asus etc. fall off the same machines as Apple, Fujitsu, HPQ etc. (Lenovo being a notable exception). They contain the same CPU, same RAM ...same MS licence etc. Some even have almost the same shell (e.g. ECS-DELL-FSC-Toshiba).
If you use it for work, I suggest you get the cheapest one that offers you enough value to perform your task (e.g. 15.4", 17" being no longer portable; x3100, 2Gig are all sufficient for coding: if you need real power, you'll ssh anyway to the given HPC). You will not get a heart-attack if it drops, gets scratched or stolen: you will just get a brand new one, being 2x better for approx. the same price within a year with strong batteries (they will fade within 2 years anyway).
If it is (also) for showing feathers, then obviously Apple, Sony (and no, Lenovo is no good for attracting attention).
But then again, these are PC-s, and the P stands for Personal: tastes and habits vary. On a pure technical level, whichever runs Linux/BSD best (generally the least fancy ones) already gives enough empowerment to change the world...
If you are on a budget, I recommend getting a slightly older model (slower processor) but with as much memory as you can get. I also recommend that you get a model with the one-year warranty instead of the three-year warranty, to save money. There are so many people selling ThinkPad parts and accessories that there is no reason to pay for a warranty that you will probably never use when you can replace anything that breaks yourself for less money. I just priced one at lenovo.com and it was less than $1,100.
BTW, I strongly considered buying a MacBook but I went and tried them at the Apple store and I found that the keyboard is really horrible for programming. Only Sony VAIO is worse. No dedicated home/end/pageup/pagedown on either?!?!
I personally like going with the three year warranty (but in a bundle rather than explicitly adding it on). I previously had a T22 that I ran into the ground, and over the course of its life had the motherboard, drive, and power cord replaced.
Also, in the one occasion when I needed customer service, it was really good. I bought it in the US, but called up the support line in Germany, and had a new hard drive here in Innsbruck, Austria the next day. I was pleasantly surprised: I thought I would get hassled because of the change of country, or they would be slow, or see that I had bought it with Ubuntu and give me grief for that, but they really didn't ask any questions, just sent a guy over with a new drive.
They're not pretty, but they are highly functional, don't suffer from the quality issues Dell had circa 2002 - 2006, and if something breaks or you need a peripheral of some sort, you won't be in hock to Apple for half the cost of the machine or more.
Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are.
http://www.techbargains.com/vendor_detail.cfm/96/lenovo-coup...
Lenovo ThinkPad R61 Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 14.1 inch Notebook PC $552.07 Free Shipping, May. 22 8 AM
lenovo has the Lenovo ThinkPad R61 Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 14" Widescreen Notebook PC for a low $649.50 - 15% off Coupon Code: USPSAVEMORENOW (Exp 5/26) = $552.07 Free Shipping. Tax in most states.
5.2lbs; 14.1"; Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 @ 2.0GHz; 1GB RAM; 80GB HDD; DVD-ROM/CDRW Combo; 802.11a/b/g; Linux; 1yr warranty
I believe thinkpad is one of the few laptops left that has what's called a stick? you know the little nub on the keyboard that you can use instead of a touch pad, and in reality it's way better than a touch pad. god I hate touch pads.
I wish I had bought a thinkpad.
My MacBook Pro is my second Apple laptop (the first was a G4 powerbook) and it is going to be the last unless things change rapidly before it goes u/s.
- The keyboard is ok, but the metal finish is slippery.
- The large track pad forces typing with wrists at odd angles.
- OS X is horrible (all my applications are Linux native so work oddly on OS X, plus no focus on mouse being my biggest two complaints - the rest are subjective/personal).
- No region crack for the DVD player, which is unacceptable for travel. Doesn't even work with VLC.
On the plus side the build quality is superb, the screen is good, and for it's size/weight the performance is outstanding. I certainly wouldn't trade it for anything other than a Thinkpad or maybe two or three Dells - one a year, for when they break ;)
I've seen people get OS X and then do nothing but run XP under virtualization because they can't be bothered to figure out the OS X native apps. I wonder what, exactly, you mean by "all my applications?"
Plus a few things that aren't so important, like xplanet and SuperKaramba.
Then again, these days, I use so few "Linux only" applications that it would probably be easier than ever to switch. My "regular usage" list is: vim, Firefox, Thunderbird, Perl, bash (and all of the GNU tools, like sed, grep, find, locate, awk, etc.), GIMP, Inkscape, VNC, KVM. But I'd still have to have Linux boxes or virtual machines around, because I need build environments for a dozen or so Linux distributions. And bash and the GNU tools are so vital to my workflow that I'd be suffering a lot of the time.
So, I've considered getting a Mac so that I'd be surrounded by great design (I'm becoming more of a designer and usability guy within my company every day, and my design sense is still woefully inadequate for the job, and I've read on numerous occasions and from numerous sources that one great technique for improving is to surround yourself with great design), but it'd certainly be painful.
Also, middle-mouse-button paste is vital to my happiness, and neither Mac OSX nor Windows has it.
You may have to learn new shortcuts or how to configure things in Windows or OSX but it is all doable. For windows you may have to install Cygwin or PowerShell to get a respectable prompt.
I use a windows box at work. I use Mac and Windows at home. I recently switched from Ubuntu to OSX and I ran into many of the same problems initially. I wanted things to work exactly the same as Ubuntu and that just wasn't happening. After about three months I learned many of the OSX shortcuts and finally configured and set up my linux programs for OSX. Now it's all good.
So, my statement agrees with yours, I think.
I have worked in Windows environments quite a bit when doing contract work, and I'm familiar with Cygwin, but it's not an acceptable command line environment--the way it chafes when doing anything outside of the Cygwin environment is too much friction.
Mac OS X is slightly better now that it has bash by default. But its system tools are weak compared to those found on Linux systems. I feel this same pain when using Solaris and FreeBSD. In all three cases, it's possible to install good versions of those tools, but I have to retrain my fingers to call gawk instead of awk, etc.
Again, it would be easier than ever, because vim has good versions on both Mac and Win, and Perl runs fine everywhere. Firefox and Thunderbird, too. But retraining myself to work in the Mac or Windows way would be uncomfortable. And I hate being uncomfortable.
It's not quite the same as a scroll wheel in that there are some programs where one scrolling technique (wheel or trackpad) will work while the other won't, but it's similar enough to handle most cases.
and infact on linux you can modify the area of the touchpad that does this. I think you can even add horizontal scroll if your touchpad didn't previously support it (not 100% on this).
In other words: if I'm in Safari, I can remap three-finger swipe to changing tabs, swipe down for new tab, rotate right/left to back and forward, etc. It's very useful.
(The better screen rez on the D830 is another)
http://www.thinkwiki.org is the best resource I'm aware of for Linux + Thinkpad installation tips.
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPo...
Given that the poster is using the system to learn to program, I doubt he needs the MBP. The MB should more than suit that need.
With that said, I'll also recommend that you get a ThinkPad instead of a Mac. They're time- and battle-tested machines, and work well. The Mac may seem to have less problems, but both usually have about the same amounts of problems, but just of some different natures.
I like the Mac, and I can live with Windows. Both are good machines, and you have to try both to see which one you like better.
It helped me alot in setting up my ThinkPad.
Back to the original Question: IMHO Thinkpads are very good and especially reliable Notebooks, but they also aren't cheap. When getting a Thinkpad then a T-Model most of the others don't differ that much from Notebooks sold by HP or Dell.
Crappy display drivers, a tendency to shut down when you plug them in or dock them, etc. etc.
We're switching to HPs now.
Me, I'm on my second MBP in 3 years and I'm happy. Another friend of mine just replaced his MacBook with a MBP, because it just wasn't quite keeping up.
But one person probably isn't truly a reference... So more references are needed.
I know, just as it'll change again in the next 3 years.
> A new Macbook Pro (such as one he might buy) comes with...
Most of these things come with a standard MacBook, too, so why not buy a MacBook?
Some of the things that MacBook doesn't have that the MBP does:
> $1599 with Student Developer discount
Actually, it's $1799, but that doesn't factor in taxes, which bring it to about retail, or $2000, and that's without any configuration options (the one I bought, spec'ed out again, is still $3000).
(By the way, If you're looking to buy a Mac, look at the Amazon discount over Apple's store: with free shipping and no taxes, it's almost always cheaper.)
> LED Glossy options versus fluorescent matte
True.
> All of this means that his computer might last for more years than before, since the hardware is already top of the line compared not just to mac machines released a year prior, but to high end pc laptops, as well
I guess it's whether or not you're willing to make that bet or not.
> which means he might as well get the MacBook Pro.
Or, he could save a lot of money, get an equivalent machine for his needs, and buy a new one every year and still not spend as much.
>True.
False. The matte screen is LED and its unclear from the specs whether the glossy is LED or fluorescent.
From apple.com: "15.4-inch (diagonal) antiglare widescreen TFT LED backlit display with support for millions of colors; optional glossy widescreen display"
The Student Developer discount price is $1599, the student price is $1799.
You can still get a MacBook for half that, which has everything else you mentioned, so why not get a MacBook and upgrade twice as often? (With resale value, you'll be way on top.)
What ultimately caused me to return it was trying to run a 3D plugin of a scene in a drawing program. It was unbelievably slow, while I remembered how well a Dell m1330 ran, which has the same integrated video chipset, Intel's X3100. I researched that either Apple or Intel had crappy video drivers on the Mac for that chipset, which meant it was already behind the times out of the box, never mind in two years.
And with the discount, the MacBook Pro might even be sold for a profit after 3-6 months in the worst case scenario (since including taxes it's worth $2,100), but the same MacBook at either Student Developer or Student price would likely be sold for a loss.
If you hate Apple, then I'd go with a ThinkPad personally, but I don't know what's good on that side of things.
Generally, you're not giving up a whole lot going refurb except a shinier box and the ability to BTO.
If I was unable to use an external screen for extended sessions at home I might favor the larger screen.
My friend gave me good advice about this once when I was complaining, he said "Why would you try to save money on a tool that will not only be the basis for your profession, but also the device you will spend most of your day on?". He was right. Its like trying to save 150 bucks on a bed that has a huge lump in the middle that makes you wake up with a sore back every morning. Its not worth saving the money. Don't worry so much about bang for the buck, focus on getting that consistent bang to get the job done each day without added stress. A carpenter wouldn't go to work each day with a plastic hammer and a nail file instead of a saw, so approach your purchase with the same logic. Find out your needs, find the tools that meets those needs, and then make your decision from that point. Don't let money be that big of an influence, you will regret it.
I used an X41 as a mobile development box for quite a while, and only upgraded to a MacBook Pro when I started shooting a lot of RAW photos with my DSLR and wanted to run Lightroom.
I have been planning to get the new eeepc (when it comes out in a week or two) - I hadn't considered a second hand thinkpad.
Thanks very much indeed for a great tip.
I got my wife a Dell under the Tulane student discount, loaded Ubuntu dual boot, and she chooses Ubuntu. I wouldn't recommend a Dell, but it sure attests to the usability of Ubuntu.
I'm not sure I would get a macbook simply because I can't stand the short screen, glossy or not. MBP is definitely not a budget buy. Thinkpads seem awefully nice. Since you can run linux on a mac now, I would think the question comes down to do you or do you not want OS X?
I have to say though, I have never been more please than getting a $200 iBook. It used to get deadly slow if you leave firefox 2 open for days, but with firefox 3, it got a new breath of life.
Under $700: You just walk into best buy and try to max out ram/HD/Optical Drive/USB Ports and stuff. Its hard to say who's a sure winner becuase this category is so tight.
$700-1000: Either do what you did for the lower price range, or sometimes you can get a lower end PC from the next price range, if you know where to look.
Over $1000: Thinkpad, MBP, Dell Precision, HP 85xx/87xx series.
despite lusting for a MPB I recently acquired a hp nc4400 second hand which rocks when I am away from the desktop it runs Hardy and all the soft I need for my coding (and I am not starting to learn :P)
... and you get the feeling that your are doing something for the environment in the process (not that I'm a hardcore green or anything ;)
What's your budget? A budget of < $1200 basically rules out any recent mac laptop.
Even the best backup plan and warranty won't cover the "oh FUCK ME" moment when you realize your $3000 laptop just got lost, dropped, or stolen.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE...
If you're purely looking for a cheap machine that will hold up decently well, you're going to be looking at a Dell + warranty.
If you're looking for higher quality (and price point), you're going towards Lenovo/Apple
I need to add $79 for VMWare Fusion to run different VMs for FreeBSD, Linux and another $150 for Windows XP pro. But this laptop will have all client system that I need to use.
I guess you can do the same thing on Lenovo ThinkPads with similar cost or maybe cheaper. If you don't need to write stuffs for OS X/iPhone, you just need to use Safari Windows to check your web sites.
Since your are beginner to learn programming. I guess a ThinkPad with Linux and you can start to learn python right away.
I have 2 gigs and frequently go to the limit with the number of apps I have open. Slowdowns due to lack of ram can really kill your flow.
I have a regular macbook, mainly because of OS X, which gives me unix tools with an OS that just works. Apple's hardware is ok, not great. I've had issues with 3 out of 3 notebooks. That said, the issues have become smaller (so Apple's QC seems to have improved).
If I could run OS X on cheaper hardware, I would do it in an instance. I don't need to show off at the coffee shop. :)
Main caveat: have to baby its airflow so that it doesn't overheat. Vista will throttle on overheating, Linux won't, at least not the kernel I'm using.
Buy used from Craigslist. Make sure you get original purchase receipt, O/S install DVD's. Or from Costco. 90 day return policy.
off-topic, but i've never seen this discussed anywhere. TO dual head my toshiba laptop with ubuntu Gutsy, I choose gutsy in grub with external monitor disconnected, then plug it in about 4 seconds later. It works, no nasty xorg.conf to edit.
Another great thing about the macbooks is their high resale value. Factor that into the cost.
Very cool. Ubuntu 8.04 works like a charm.
If you don't care, that's easier for you. If you do care (like me) - then you should do some serious research and, frankly, can still have some backwards thoughts after your purchase.
I was in the situation similar to yours, i.e. I wanted a laptop to be able to learn programming in different places. As a long time computer user, I had my specific preferences: 1. minimum weight and size; I want to have my laptop with me all the time and not feel constrained with it 2. maximum battery working time. noone thinks that a cell phone that is only able to work half of a day is ok, why is it ok for laptop? in the meanwhile, I want a laptop with a battery life as long as possible. 3. i wasn't concerned about screen quality, as I don't want to edit images on my laptop but mainly work with text and programs. but now I think screen of my current IBM X60s could really be brighter. it's ok to use in rooms, when not under direct sunlight, but not with the minimum brightness settings. viewing angles are decent, but cold be better too. in general, from what i gather, IBM/Lenovo is very conservative in their choice of screens. In non-Apple world, the only company whose laptops' get frequent praise for their screens is Sony. 4. i'm very used to desktop keyboard, so the more I was inclined to buy a ThinkPad: their keyboards are often said to be of great quality and the key placement is the closest to desktop that I've seen. 5. i don't need file storage of great size, but I really want to be sure that my hard drive won't break. so I chose SSD (these models don't come with them standard, the hdd was upgraded manually by the prev. owner) 6. i wanted to have cellular modem built-in, so I went a bit out of the way to get it: here in Russia the models with WWAN are not sold, so I bought import model and had to unlock it with a special program. It works now! also: I needed Windows. In fact I think that open-source OS is the wave of the future, but I don't ride that wave. I'm deeply rooted in Windows. XP is fine for me, don't need Vista. mat screen. 4x3 screen proportions. lower dpi screen, please. 1024x768 on 12" is ok (107 dpi), but higher resolution screens have higher dpi - I have problems with those. I have good vision, but I don't want to strain it.
So, after careful consideration, that brought me the following laptop: IBM X60s (1702-64M) 12.1 1024x768 | CD 1.66LV | 2GB | 32GB SSD | BT+abg+WWAN(MC8755) [1,5 kg, 6..8 hours of mild work] I bought it from a ThinkPads forum member in Australia. I'm generally quite happy with it, but I'm still yet to get adjusted to some issues like the smallish keyboard (maybe a light 14" would be better? or should I just adjust to this one?) and not very bright screen (it's ok in the room, but when I'm on a bus and there's sunshine in the street and the bus turns - oops, I can't see anything anymore :) - maybe a Sony would be better)
originally retailed for $2200 but i've seen them lately for around $800.
Spend an extra $100 and load up the RAM to 1.25GB. It runs linux like a charm and gets great battery life.
Best of all, it's got a titanium case and doesn't flex and groan the way mac laptops do. It's light and rock solid.
For $800 it's by far the best deal you'll find today.
If you like games, don't buy it however b/c it has a slow graphics card for 3d stuff (I don't play games)...
Price should be at $400-500ish
that said: i will add to the groups discussion i am a die hard thinkpad guy. the 'stick button' is SO MUCH more effective than a touchpad. they are fantastic machines. X series are small light and about $1k - $1.5k. i never spend more.
downside: Windows. or worse... VISTA!
A few months back, I decided to travel to china. I sold off my desktop, and because the macbook was small and nice looking, I bought it. I installed windows on it, installed bootcamp and all was fine, and I really loved this notebook for a few months.
But the thing is, in China, I was constantly on the move. And I was moving with the laptop all the time in my bag. The macbook does not deal with this well at all. Two nasty things happened: First, my hard drive failed a mere 4 months after I bought it. I lost weeks of work, and the Apple repair store would not replace it for me for 3 weeks because of chinese new year. So I bought a new hard drive and did it myself. The instructions online do not mention that you need a very strange and difficult to find screwdriver to do this.
Next thing that happend is that a piece of plastic along the edge broke off. The problem with the macbooks body is that when a piece along the edge chips off, the entire edge slowly peels of. My laptop is losing the edge, and now the resell value is less than half of the original because it looks fugly as hell.
Some other things:
* The white macbook gets dirty as hell quickly
* Bootcamp is no longer free! You need to buy Mac OSX to get the new version of Bootcamp. There are some on the torrent sites, but you never know what trojan you'll be getting, and a trojan in a kernel driver is nasty
* When booting windows, the keyboard does not always get detected at startup. When reinstalling from CD, this can be frustrating. And if you have that 30 seconds countdown on windows, you have to wait for it to countdown because the keyboard is not detected. You also cannot go into safe mode.
* There is no frickin right click on the keyboard. For development work, it's very annoying. Try using Eclipse or Visual Studio without right click.
* There are no fricking curly braces or square brackets or the pipe symbol on my macbook keyboard! You cannot open or close functions, you cannot index arrays and you cannot do a logical OR. Who came up with that braindead keyboard designs. Also, there is no printscreen key. You never know how much that screen is useful till its gone. (this is the german keyboard layout I'm talking about)
* In some rooms with overhead projects, the audio of the macbook goes on and off randomly. I learnt this the hard way when tryign to do a presentation. This probably has to do with the remote control
* The webcam is mirrored.
* If a CD is inside and your macbook has no power, there is no way of getting it out
* The macbook comes with a minidv video output, A.K.A make them pay extra money
* The coolness factor of a macbook is long gone. Everyone and their grandma own a macbook
On the positive side: * Has webcam
I'm about to switch my laptop as soon as I can get apple to repair that hard drive for me. I've done some reaearch, and I'm going for the:
LENOVO THINKPAD x61t
It's a rugged looking tablet PC, smaller than the macbook, has a docking station and is not particularly expensive.
Conclusion: Macbook is like a pretty but crazy girlfriend. In the beginning, you are madly in love, and later you have to break up when bits start falling off!
* Any white computer, like a white car, is going to look super dirty.
* Bootcamp comes with any new MacBook as part of the package. You would only need to worry about trojans(!?) if you were buying an old, used machine and didn't have the extra money for 10.5. It's a fraction of the price of Vista, so what's the trouble here?
* The German keyboard sure is peculiar (http://flickr.com/photos/fuzheado/453807351/) but is this just an Apple thing? How does Asus, Toshiba or Lenovo compare?
* Right-clicking is usually done with control, and that works in VMWare, but BootCamp is a different deal. If Apple had better Windows trackpad drivers, they could fix this.
* The webcam only appears to be mirrored, it's all done in software. You can turn this option off.
* Any CD stuck in a machine that's slot load will be difficult to rescue if the power is off.
* The MiniDV output is a bit of a pain because you need a dongle, but you can use VGA, DVI or composite from the same port. Most notebooks only have a VGA port which is probably more convenient until you want DVI, in which case you need a new notebook.
* If you need to buy a computer to 'be cool', then I guess you need a MacBook Air. That's gold-plated. With diamonds.
Apple is the only computer maker with that wierd layout. All others are sane.