Ask HN: Which computer/laptop do you use? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Which computer/laptop do you use?

17 pointsjustplay83 comments

I've been a Lenovo man for the longest time, and I am currently running a T430s. I find it to be the best balance of physical size and computing power there is to find.

How do you find the keyboard? I'm not too concerned about the weird island style, but only six rows slightly freak me out (currently using a T410s).

The left side of the laptop gets noticeably hot if you don't vacuum the CPU cooling exhaust regularly. It would've not been a problem, but you end up resting left wrist on a very warm spot. Also the left pinky lingers exactly over the CPU and gets dry and itchy if you try and run a poorly written WebGL demo. The keyboard itself is fine, though I've been using laptops as a primary machine for 10+ years, so YMMV.

I was afraid I wouldn't like it, but after using it for a couple of weeks I am very pleased with it. I think the island style mainly was implemented to allow for the keyboard backlight. That's a bonus for me since I work in low light from time to time. Backlight really helps then. Also, the six rows things is no issue for me. I rarely se the extra keys anyways. The PrtSc placement perplexes me though.

Thanks – yes, the PrtSc key is a little…odd. I was wondering about the PgUp/Dn buttons as well, as they are in this stupid location where they absolutely don’t belong. Why do you find the keyboard backlight helpful? So far, I found the ThinkLight to be more flexible.

Guess I’ll wait a little longer and see what the future brings, hopefully a 4:3 notebook with seven full rows and no touchpad </dreaming>.

With adding the keyboard backlight, did they get rid of the Thinklight at top of the screen?

I can't speak for the T430S but the T430 has 2 levels of backlighting and then if I click function space 1 more time the backlighting goes off and the little lamp at the top of the screen turns on.

after using a t430s in the store, I went home and bought a t420s at the outlet store online, for that very reason.

ymmv. lots of people love the new style too.

Hrm, that's what I feared. I was a proud owner of a [0] before this one, but even the Core i520M slowly gets…slow, especially one of the newer graphics chips would be wonderful sometimes.

[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hnOCUkbix0

Where did you find a T430 in a store? I haven't seen ThinkPads in any of the retailers in my area.

Lenovo has some dedicated shops, at least in Germany. What is ‘your area’?

Macbook Air 13" (2011). All the power I need and small enough to carry everywhere.

I've just today, finally relegated my T400 Lenovo to media server duties for the bedroom. It was my desk computer, utilising the docking station and a second screen.

I now have my 2012 i7 Mac Mini on my desk.

I used to have an Acer with an IR port at the front. So when I was demoting it to the media server duties, I thought I'd try and piggy back on that IR port to control it with the regular TV remote. It was a good hack and it actually worked, but I forgot ... to test it from a distance. Apparently the IR receiver, even with the decorative cover removed, wasn't sensitive enough to pick up anything from farther than 1 feet away. Likely, by design too.

and I'm going to attempt to use my iPad 4 as my portable computer. Made sure to get QuickOffice HD, image editing apps, Dropbox, Prompt, etc.

Macbook Air 13" (2012). Powerful enough for webdev and easy to transport.

Macbook 15 inch i7 2010. It's fast but worthless battery life. Recently got the $249 Chromebook and i'm finding that besides creating actual ipa's and apk's, I'm not touching the macbook anymore. I usually get 8+ hours out of the ultra light thing and it's fast enough to do mostly anything I want on it (including web dev, mobile dev and 2d game dev).

Manage to do quite a bit of work on an old Fuijitsu p1510, my Galaxy s2 and, when in on the move, the openpandora.

Asus G75VX (laptop) with some aftermarket parts (x2 -- one for home, one for work)

Intel HM77 Chipset with a i7 3630QM, 32GB of DDR3 1600 MHz (Crucial), 2x M500 960GB SSDs (Crucial), GeForce GTX 670MX with 3GB GDDR5, 17.3" screen (1920x1080, amazing matte screen, my favorite feature).

Cons: Ugly as hell. Heavy as hell. Battery life is terrible. The chicklit keyboard seems to require a breaking in period of about a month. Stupidly wide bezzle around the 17.3" monitor (just because the rest of the laptop is to big).

Pros: That ugly design creates the best cooled laptop I have ever worked with, it is a joy to game on for hours, best matte screen I have used on any laptop, tons of USB ports (USB3), and overall I would buy it again. Relatively clean audio out for high end headphones (Shure SE530), but at home I still use a external usb soundcard. Naturally spaced keyboard + numpad is awesome.

EDIT: I am also a bit of an Asus loyalist at this point, as it is the only company that has built laptops that survive the way I treat them. Apple, Dell, Acer, Sony (worst!) all fall apart on me. That said, I understand that the Lenovos are built like tanks and have similar features.

Custom laptop by DevilTech. I don't recommend them because of bad customer service (it takes long for them to answer to emails etc.), but the hardware has been solid. Bought it 1.5 year ago, so it has an i5, 8GB ram and 128GB SSD along with Nvidia's crappy Optimus technology. I'm pretty satisfied though, as the laptop has a FullHD glare screen and everything I want in a laptop.

At work I use EliteBook and iMac.

@ home an old single core Pentium 4 2.1GHz Compaq Evo D500 Small Form Factor box w/ 3GB RAM from the late 90's.

On the go, a Dell Inspiron 1120 netbook from 2010.

Before too long I hope to install OpenStack to a dual quad core Xeon 3GHz server I've got w/ 32GB RAM & rdp to a Windows 7 VM from the old Compaq box & finally have some decent speed at home.

I find your setup intriguing. Clearly, you've got some spare cash for a beefy virtualization server. Why did you stick it out with the Compaq for so long?

Is the plan to have multiple VMs for other users in the household? Do you like the idea to be able to create/destroy machines if they start behaving oddly?

Is the plan to just play around with administering a VDI deployment (however small)? If so, did you consider any other hypervisors?

Sorry to probe... I just think it's interesting :)

The server was only $600 on eBay, part of a prototype project for me to learn on since I'm working on deploying an OpenStack based dedicated server company on other, much faster hardware in the coming year.

There's no one else in the household- just me, and I considered using ProxmoxVE for the VM backend because the guys behind the distro offer single instance support tickets, but for now I'm sticking with OpenStack since it's feature rich & offers additional functionality I need.

The Compaq stays around because it was my Mom's before she died- just for sentimental value really. I'm looking forward to repurposing it as an rdp client station.

The laptop's going to be part of the OpenStack cluster, too. So I'll be able to migrate my Win7 VM to it when I go out & just reach it through a KDE4 desktop installed to the OpenStack running on it.

I have lofty plans, and alot to learn to implement it. I just got the server & it took me a week to figure out how to use the arcane RAID interface in its BIOS. I have an OpenStack install guide bookmarked, but haven't taken the time to go through & do it yet. I had been working on my website, which I just finished, and was sidetracking me. I'll get to it eventually.

I use a Thinkpad T430, which I love. I especially love the extra battery I can put in. I get about 8-12 hours of battery life out of it so I can jet around cafes and not worry about having to sit near an outlet. Also, on the days I go into the office I don't have to worry if I forget my cord. It seems really sturdy so far too.

At home, I'm running a MacBook Air 13" (2011) but with Fedora 18 installed directory on it (no VM or Bootcamp). Love the hardware of Mac but not particularly fond of their OS. Absolutely love it.

At work, I've got a Dell Latitude something-or-other running Fedora 18 as well.

Linux is yummy goodness.

How are you finding running Linux on that machine? I use the 4,2 Air as well, but I've seen reports of incompatibilities, as well as reduced battery life, when running Linux.

It's pretty good. I did have some issues installing Fedora the first few times. I'm not sure if it's something I did but the very first time I installed Fedora, I thought I bricked the MBA. Couldn't get anywhere past the Disk Utility. But, I reformatted the drive twice, let it sit for an hour, and then attempted the install again. The second time is when I couldn't get the wireless working so I tried one more time and it went successfully. I actually installed Fedora 17 because that was the latest at the time. However, everything is running very smoothly now. Fedora is wicked fast on the SSD. As for battery life, it's very comparable to the native OS; I've gone just over 4 hours before needing to worry; I think the longest I've gone is around 5 hours. The weird thing is that I have double battery indicators in the tray when unplugged from the power cord. I've got it hooked up to an external monitor and that works; closing the lid puts the laptop to sleep. I've also encrypted my hard drive and the only issue I noticed there is that if you don't type in your password relatively soon after boot, the OS will fail to load so you have to force the shut down and restart. Feel free to email me any specific questions if you want.

Thinkpad W520 w/ RAID.

It must be a laptop. Can't really take a desktop on a vacation, can I now? :)

13" MacBook Pro with Retina Display (late 2012). 256GB SSD. 2.5GHz i5. 8GB RAM.

I was about to buy a Macbook Air with similar hardware, but the Retina Display got me and made me spend a few bucks more. Totally worth it!

At home: self-built Linux box

On the go: 13" MacBook Pro (mid 2009). It's been a great machine, but is finally starting to show some age. I'm looking into upgrading to something new soon.

MacBook Pro mid-2009 user here. 17" high-res screen awesome for coding. Recently upgraded to 8GB RAM & 256GB SSD using off-the shelf components. Works well, but suspect that four year old machine will need to be replaced in the next two years. 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo starting to feel slow. Expect to change in the next two years, but currently missing a compelling reason to do so.

How is the SSD? My biggest issue is with the 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU. CPU usage goes up to 80% while using Google Hangouts.

13" Macbook pro and a Toshiba Satellite 17" laptop. Toshiba's have been super reliable for me, drawback is they always weigh a ton, but it is basically a desktop in a laptop case.

Lenovo X220 with 16Gb RAM, the long-life battery, and a few docking stations (for work and mobile); IBM-era X60s Thinkpad moored to a docking station for home.

does the X220 really take 16gb of RAM? crucial.com says it only takes 8, how did you do that? The x230 takes 16gb...

It doesn't "officially", but if you put in a pair of 8GB sticks with the specifications that Crucial gives you for the recommended RAM, it works fine (although it takes a pleasant while to come back up from full hibernation).

I just got a 15" MacBook Pro w/Retina display a couple of weeks ago. i7, 16Gb RAM, 512Gb SSD. It's replacing a 7 year-old MacBook. I'm expecting to get 7 years out of this as well. I'm still at the "new machine" stage where everything just "pops" - not even a hint of delay. The 15" screen is really nice, highly recommend it over the 13", yet it's still portable and not as crazy as some of my friends who have 17" MBPs.

Would you say it's worth the money? I'm looking to upgrade and the 15" rMBP looks awesome.

Thinkpad W530, 16Gb, i7-3820QM, 1920x1080 res.

Nvidia graphics, easily supports 4 external 1920x1080 monitors via docking station. Pretty awesome.

Desktop: i7-2600, radeon6870, 8GB 9-9-9-24, 128GB M4 SSD, 27" 1920x1200 IPS

Laptop: Acer AS1810T-8679

For actual code, though, everything happens on an EC2 instance (a medium size) that I leave running and can ssh and gnuscreen into from anywhere at any time. Probably the best perk of being a 100% curses / vim user. Also impossibly easy to back up with snapshotting.

Asus Zenbook UX-32VD, upgraded to 10GB of memory ($30) and swapped the disk for a 256 GB SSD. It had a suspend issue at first (late 2012), but a kernel upgrade fixed it. SSD helps battery life--up to 6 hours at low load. There is some convenience in the 1920x1080 display matching my external display at home, though I'd rather go higher res in both.

i was looking into that option for a while. didn't it have bleeding on the screen, and a horrible touchpad? what are your experiences?

I use 'synclient PalmDetect=1 PalmMinWidth=3', otherwise I bump it with my palms. The touchpad works fine, though I still use an external mouse at home and work. I've been pretty happy with the screen. I can see some edge-bleed on early in the boot sequence in a dark room, but it mostly goes away. I normally use a light background, but I've never noticed it after startup, except at 100% brightness with black background in a dark room. The screen gets pretty bright so I don't go above 50% brightness unless I'm outside. The viewing angle on the screen is quite good.

'synclient PalmDetect=1 PalmMinWidth=3'

Where do you enter these settings?

Custom PC with triple monitor setup. Ivy Bridge i7 with a Vertex4 512GB SSD and plenty of RAM. I love to build systems, and need a big workstation, fullsized mechanical keyboard, large screen etc. All three screens are on articulated wall mounts, so I can arrange in any configuration. Windows8 for games, linux VMs or my VPS for development.

15" 2011 MacBook Pro. I'll probably go back to a Thinkpad with Linux for the next one, if Apple keeps tabletizing OS X.

Dell Latitute E6430, i5-3340M, 12GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Docking with Linux Mint 14. Cheap & Blazingly fast. Love it!

Laptop: HP Probook 4530s, upgraded to 8GB of DDR3 RAM and a 128GB Plextor M3 SSD. Windows 8 Pro + Ubuntu 12.10 in VMWare Workstation.

Desktop: Silverstone SG06BB, 8GB DDR3-1600, 256GB Crucial m4 SSD + 320GB Samsung 2.5" HDD, EVGA GTX 650 Ti graphics. Windows 7 Ultimate + Ubuntu 12.04 LTS in VMWare Workstation.

ThinkPad T420, 8GB of memory, 500GB Disk and 256GB SSD (mSATA)

(Actually the SSD just died, waiting for RMA.)

On the go: a Samsung Chromebook 550, so the old version of the $250 model. I use this to SSH into my development server, which consists of a series two Raspberry Pi.

I keep my old 15 inch MacBook pro around for TF2 and to run more involved deployments on VMs.

I'm using a Dell xps 1640 (1080 res, 8gb, 128gb ssd) for the past 4+ years. With the SSD it's silent and runs cool for the most part.

I do graphic design.

For extra storage I use a DLink dns320 with a fan mod so it's cooler and also silent.

MacBook Pro 10.1 (Retina, 2.7Ghz, 16GB RAM, 751GB SSD) Only issue, battery life

Desktop, i7 3770, 6gb RAM, HD5970, RAID of 3 1tb drives and a 64gb SSD that I run Linux off of when I need to get real work done.

Laptop is a ThinkPad x121e that desperately needs replacing.

Notebook: MacBook Air 2011 13" i7 4/256GB.

Desk: MacBook Pro 2010 17" 8/512/750/3tb, with a 24" LCD

Desk: i7-970 24/512/2x2tb with 3x24" LCD. (Win 7 and Ubuntu)

iPad and iPhone.

At home I use a $249 Samsung Chromebook and RDP into either a Mac Mini or Dell Windows PC.

If WWDC brings a Macbook Air with at least a 1080p display, I'll switch to that.

I currently use an entry-level 2012 MacBook Pro, which is abysmal. My ideal setup would be a Chromebook Pixel for home and a fully-maxed retina MBP with a 512gb drive.

I use a custom-built PC (AMD Phenom II X4 955, 8GB RAM, nVidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti) for working (and gaming) at home and a Google Nexus 10 for working on-the-go.

15" MacBook Pro Retina 16GB 512GB SSD + (2) 27" Thunderbolt displays rotated to portrait on ergotron arms and Matias tactile pro keyboard on the desk.

This machine, Asus Eee PC. 1015PX? Atom N570, 2 GB RAM.

Work: i5-3330, 8 GB RAM. No SSD, just spinning platters (~2 TB storage, much of it unused)

MacBook Air 11" 8 gb ram plus Thunderbolt Display.

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon (2012). Lightweight (rivals the MBA), best-in-class keyboard, with an understated yet beautiful design

Macbook Pro 15" Retina - good enough to be your primary workstation and I think it is perfectly portable (carry anywhere).

MacBook Air 11". The best computer I've used.

Dell Inspiron 15R - i3, 4GB RAM, 500 HDD + Win 8. Tried using a second monitor a while ago, didn't find any use for it.

13" MacBook Pro with Retina Display (2012)

4 years old Asus K40AB with the performance of a 6 years old. Still saving up for a new machine.

Macbook Air 13" 2011, i7, 256GB SSD - perfect for programming, good enough for playing Bastion.

Thinkpad x60, I have yet to find a laptop that can live up to how these series feels.

@Home Acer Aspire S7 @Work Macbook Pro 15" retina @Both Chromebook Pixel

15" MacBook Pro (early 2011) with 16GB and 512GB SSD. I'm satisfied :-)

Work: Chromebook Pixel

Hobby: 11" MacBook Air; Early 2011-ish?

Do you mainly use the Pixel in ChromeOS, or go developer mode and boot Linux?

I use it exclusively in Chrome OS, but I'm sort of cheating :). If nothing else, I work at Google (although nowhere near Chrome or Chrome OS), and a lot of our non-coding workflows already favor browser-based tools.

The vast majority of my day is spent in the Chrome SSH client ssh'd into my desktop Linux box where I've usually got a half dozen windows open in a persistent tmux session. I've bound tmux to switch windows with alt+function keys, so this is pretty comparable to working on a good old-fashioned text terminal with much prettier type. My development life is largely writing C++ in vim. These days with a suitable set of plugins, vim can make for a really solid development environment (with semantic completion, file navigation, etc.).

For the rest, well, most of that happened in a browser already anyway. Reading docs, writing docs, code reviews, code browsing, e-mail, calendaring.

Prior to Google I was definitely a Mac guy. At times a miss it, but not as many as I was expecting, roughly two months into this little experiment.

Custom built gaming desktop. No laptop/tablet. HTC Sensation.

Lenovo ThinkPad T430s

Asus Zenbook UX31A (on the go), Asus N56VJ (home/office)

Mac mini 2011, base model (the $599 one).

Macbook Air 13" (2012) 8GB RAM 256 Flash

HP EliteBook 8540p 8GB ram

Does anyone know if there is a laptop or desktop the parts of which are made ethically?

Macbook pro 15 Retina

Dell XPS 16GB (W7)

17" Macbook Pro (2010) that I've spent way too much having upgraded because I don't want a 15" screen. Dear Tim Cook. Please bring back the 17" MBP.

27" iMac (2012) - standard top end specs.

13inch Mac book pro, using it for past 1yr and its awesome.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com