Hacker News Reader

Comment by lazerwalker | Hacker News Reader

I've been able to accomplish the "meander around, finding cool new places to work" thing pretty well with an 11" MB Air (and optional tethered iPhone).

It doesn't have the ridiculous battery life of an iPad, but other than that it essentially gives you the same portability without feeling like you're constraining yourself to a subpar development environment (I've tried doing serious web dev on an iPad, but the lack of a web inspector and the ability to remap caps lock as control are both dealbreakers for me).

View on HN

Seconded. 11" MB Air feels just as portable as my iPad. That said, the author seems to be getting positive effects from using exclusively remote tools...

Like you, I see draw backs. I don't want to use vim as my primary editor, and I hate that I can't have tabs loading in the background in the web browser, or can't be on Skype while doing something else...

I skype through my iPhone while coding on my iPad all the time. The browser is the weakest part of the iPad experience though, it's true.

So the solution to sub-par multitasking is to buy a small iPad to use at the same time?

Everyone has a phone, for most definitions of everyone. Skype works on every major smartphone platform (and several minor platforms). What would I use my phone for if not for holding a conversation?

Because Skype also works perfectly fine on an iPad. An additional device is not a replacement for multitasking.

And phone calls to landlines work perfectly fine on my desktop. I still have a desk phone sitting next to me though.

When you can get an 11" MB AIR for $1000, using an iPad in this way feels "forced". I like his thoughts on Win 8 Surface tablet, though: side-by-side apps, better integrated keyboard, likely better multitasking (or at least a simpler way of switching between apps....

I think the Surface point raises a larger issue that ought to have Apple and MS worried- when you're doing everything remotely like the author is, your actual device doesn't matter much. As long as he has competent SSH, and a suite of basic apps, he's good to go.

> As long as he has competent SSH, and a suite of basic apps, he's good to go.

Totally agreed. There's a nice little conversation going on here about a Macbook Air vs. an iPad, but shouldn't this raise the point that a $300 netbook can do all this and more?

If all you're using is SSH and a web browser, why spring for the high-end (and high-priced) Apple hardware?

That is exactly my travel rig. I don't use it full-time, however-- I would spring for a lenovo ultra probably if I was going to do that.

But I have the advantage of the dev environment I like (even mimics the full rig), I can work on a plane without wifi (my netbook runs servers just fine), and I can boot Win if I need to. It also fits easily onto even a small airplane tray/table.

The only drawback is that unity isn't quite as good as the netbook remix ubuntu used to have. And some progs like mysql workbench don't respect monitor size and make their windows too large (thank god for virtual desktops).

I will probably do this for my next 'round' of tech investment again rather than go ipad.

Because its nicer to work on and use than a cramped and cheap net book.

But, if that works for you it would be fine. Me? I'm going with the nicer hardware even if I'm just using vi and terminal.

When you can get an iPad for half that price, it doesn't seem "forced".

How much is $500 worth to you in terms of productivity, though? Depends on how much you earn per hour, but for a lot of people, $500 isn't much in the big scheme of things.

For $500 I could put up with some level of annoyance... $500 buys a lot of Linode 512 time.

$500 / (10 hrs/week * 50 weeks) = $1/hr. I'd only worry about it if your hourly rate approaches this.

Alternatively, since we're drawing arbitrary amounts of time from the air, $500 / (10 hrs/week * 1 wk) = $50/hr. Meanwhile I'm paying two months of rent with the money I saved not buying a Macbook.

How much time/money do you save when you don't have to wait for your code to compile before you can leave, or when you don't have to worry about making sure you save before your battery dies? I can spend $1000 on a laptop and work on it with the same constraints as any workstation, or I can put that $500 to several years of Linode and have money left over to type "go build massive_project" then meet my girl for a coffee while it chugs away in the background without a worry.

This is essentially what I'm doing these days. I wrote quite a lot of my upcoming CoffeeScript book (and its example applications) this way in Istanbul. Spending the morning in one waterpipe cafe, then afternoon in another.

Battery life was the main hindrance, as I would always need to find a place with a convenient power socket at least for the other half of the day. If somebody made an MBA-like, Linux-capable machine with a full-day battery, I'd buy it no matter the cost.

30 seconds Googlin':

http://www.hypershop.com/HyperJuice-External-Battery-for-Mac...

I wonder how heavy it is... I carry a similar item for my iPad and iPhone in my day bag by default, as my iPhone has some battery issues.

Sounds like a reasonable option. According to Wikipedia, the 11" MBA has a 35 Wh battery, so additional 60 Wh would indeed be a big improvement. From their Amazon specs (http://amzn.com/B00449I41K):

High capacity 60-Watt-hour lithium ion battery allows you to use your MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air for up to 20 hours

That page also gives the weight as 362 grams (12.8 ounces). But then you'll also need the MacBook airline adapter which is another 49$. The battery itself is 168$ (and the same amount in €).

Here is a review: http://www.slashgear.com/hyperjuice-external-battery-for-mac...

Seems like a valid option if I decide to stay with MBAs after February.

Update, Amazon reviews don't seem to agree:

So although it won't charge my MBA battery it looks like it will power it for over 3 hours (three stars)

i believed the 20 hour run time they posted. right. sure. i bought it so i could use my macbook at the cabin (no electricity). what i got was, at best, 3 1/2 hours of power from it (one star)

If I use the HyperMac with just the MacBook Pro 13 inch I get probably about 2 hours of use out of this external battery. (five stars)

I'd be interested if you find other alternatives - I'm sure they're out there! :-) I guess weight / charge time is the biggest variable

I can recommend the lenovo x220 ultrabook. mine is lasting for 5-7 hours, but with additional battery packs, you can get it up to 24 hours apperently

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/03/lenovos-x220-thinkpad...

Have you looked at ultrabook-class laptops with removable battery packs? Might work out for you. How was Istanbul?

Can't comment from a working perspective, but Istanbul - as with all of Turkey I've been to - is awesome (and I've lived in a bunch of places). All the exotic of North Africa filled with people who are honest, decent, friendly, and won't harass you. If I get myself mobile again, Turkey is top on my list of places to spend 3-6 months. Did I mention the food is great?

Istanbul is awesome. Scenery is beautiful, and the waterpipe cafes don't mind if you sit there the whole day, as long as you order tea or something every now and then. Quite a lot of them have decent WiFi as well, though many sites are blocked in Turkey.

This might give an idea of the places I worked in: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bergie/sets/72157631399738304/

Slightly more expensive city to live in than Berlin, though. It felt a lot cheaper when I moved there for a while from Helsinki back in 2008.

More expensive than Berlin?

I just got back from a trip to both Berlin and Istanbul. As a tourist at least it's way cheaper. Is rent just that much higher?

I haven't been to Berlin but have spent a lot of time in Istanbul.

Istanbul is big, really really big, like mind-bogglingly big. It's Europe's biggest city (although technically part of it is in Asia too) but if you want to live somewhere posh like Bebek or Nisantasi it's as expensive as anywhere else nice in a major European city. If on the other hand you're prepared to live in a less nice area or a bit further out then there's some good deals to be had.

If you're living somewhere properly then the quality of the food is far higher than that accessible to me here in my bit of the UK, eating out is generally more expensive in terms of average income percentage but typically less expensive than London in terms of raw costs.

I would highly recommend Istanbul to anyone looking to try something a bit different. It really does feel like nowhere else in the world, a chaotic mishmash of east and west but with a great vibe and great people.

If any of you guys need help / advice on just about anything in the city, let me know. I'm a Turkish expat designer (from Istanbul) living in New York—I wouldn't mind helping a fellow HNer.

I don't remember the rent exactly. It may have been somewhat similar or slightly more expensive in Istanbul. But eating out is definitely more expensive there, unless you want to subsist on lahmacun.

It depends on what you eat, but there's far more than lahmacun on the diet. Now, you're probably sticking to Turkish food (Chinese is going to start at 15TL, the equivalent of 8.5 dollars or so) but I'm regularly eating decent food for the 3-8 dollar (2.5-6 euro) range, with drink.

Great produce is also ridiculously cheap here, which makes cooking a much better deal.

Depends if you spent more time in east or west Berlin I guess, from what I remember there was a shocking price difference between the two.

My friend Matthias (wiemann.name) does that with his MB Air and he's totally happy with it. If you need web inspector, an iPad really isn't an option. I'd still recommend trying out a remote server, it's fun.

Yeah, I'd definitely love to try it at some point. Besides the cool stuff it enables you to do (like the data-crunching you mentioned in the article), there's definitely something really appealing about the minimalism of relying almost exclusively on command-line tools in a more meaningful way than just having a terminal window open as one of a dozen apps in a window manager.

I use an iPad in the same way, after switching from an MBA. the big advantages of the iPad are inbuilt 3G (I get 5gb/month for peanuts on a special offer from a couple of years ago), battery life (I never got more than 3 hours from the MBA), I move more (lean over to do some browsing and shift my position or walk around). And most importantly I am far less likely to switch to HN or some other distraction.

The big disadvantage is the lack of a web inspector, but I'm mainly working on back-end stuff at the moment.

Agreed. Also, you can't do serious web development on an OS that doesn't allow 3rd party rendering engines.

Additionally you can have 7 hours battery in the 13" MB Air against 5 hours from 11".

I get 7 hours on my retina MBP, too. At 4.6 pounds, it's about as portable as anything I've ever used--I actually sold my 11" Air a little while ago because I was annoyed with the small screen.

I ended up getting a Chromebook a few weeks ago as a cheap machine to hack and do interviews while my MBA was in for repairs. For not being much higher on the food chain than a thin client, it's pretty much perfect. Chrome's identical to Win/Mac/Linux Chrome (inspector and all); SSH works fine, "search" key (fka capslock) can even be remapped to ctrl.

Interesting... What is the battery life like on it?

On the Samsung 550 (the only model my Best Buy had on the floor), didn't do any scientific testing but definitely in the 5-7hr range. It's noticeably thicker than a MBA, but not by much; and IMHO the 12" (matte!) size is the sweet spot on a laptop. Unsure on exact specs, but plenty fast enough. Keyboard and click pad are solid as well (best pad I've ever used outside of Apple). Provided you can work within it's niche, it's a great machine for $450. Was sad to have to take it back (not in a position to throw money around I don't absolutely have to).

So you bought it and then returned? Best Buy allows you to do this?

+1 to the chromebook. It's now my main laptop (although I can't run windows/mac based linux software on it yet :/

I just got a chromebook and I HATE it. The software is ok, but I hate the hardware. Particularly the touchpad. Just awful. Doesn't do tap-to-click correctly and scrolls poorly.

I couldn't recommend it to anyone for anything other than a couch surfing machine, but then again, a tablet is just as good for that.

Which one did you get? The Samsung 550 is the one to get IMO, the touchpad is pretty great.

I can't see it becoming a main machine for me as-is. CrOS's laser focus on "the cloud" makes it extremely well suited for remote-centric work; if you can't commit 100% to doing everything from browser windows and remote terminals, you'll be happier with a more standard PC. For me, it's perfect as a backup but I'm too much of a control freak to be wholly reliant on a remote server.

Is SSH built-in, or an app?

If you enable dev mode you get access to a full linux environment, including ssh.

You can even use ssh without dev mode, but it is crippled.

There's a built-in SSH as part of crosh[0] and a more usable version paired with a HTML-based terminal emulator as an app[1]

[0] basic troubleshooting shell in CrOS

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pnhechapfaindjhomp...

I work everywhere with my MacBook Air 13" (from the bus, on benches in parks and malls, in my inlaws-to-be's living room, at restaurants), and with a 3G aircard, it's great.

Though I did the same with my iPad 1, and it was mostly great too, depending on what I needed to do.

Agreed. It seems like you'd also want the ability to occasionally hook up to a bigger monitor. Do you find the 11" screen bothers you at all, or have you gotten used to it?

I don't get it either. A modern laptop is just as portable and far, far more capable. Actually after getting a nexus 7 recently I have no interest in a bigger tablet.

Battery life on the new iPad is indeed ridiculous. I suppose the culprit may be the retina display. I barely get 2hrs out of it for anything serious.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com