ASK HN: What's your setup? | Hacker News Reader

ASK HN: What's your setup?

12 pointsbrserc33 comments

What do you hack on? Are you do 13" Air guy who uses nothing else and hacks around coffee shops or do you have three 27" screens on your desk? What is your computer's configurations, which OS do you use?

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Retina MacBook Pro 15" 16GB/512GB SSD. Which I like mainly for the screen, use it at the simulated 1920x1200 res. It sucks that it can barely play flash or do other cpu intensive things without it getting fucking hot and loud. Its a shame because the GPU is pretty fast. Wish Apple could make a fucking decent thermal design.

Thinkpad X220 16GB/256GB SSD, Win7 Pro. I love it for its small size, long battery life, and ruggedness. Although I should warn you the plastic doesn't get on well with mosquito repellant, I learned that in Costa Rica last year. Also the trackpoint, 3 mouse buttons, and keyboard. It actually has a bigger keyboard than the rMBP despite being classified as a 12" laptop. Oh and a 3-year warranty where a guy comes to your house to fix whatever is wrong that only cost $100 or so. The screen is painfully tiny at 1366x768 though.

I guess I couldn't decide on one laptop, there are both good for different things. At home I sometimes plug into a 24" Dell 1920x1200 LCD and use a Kinesys Freestyle Pro keyboard and Logitech Anywhere MX mouse. That is nice for extended computer work.

My phone is a HTC First. Yeah the Facebook phone. Its a reasonable size, looks nice, you can uninstall all the facebook junk, and the battery lasts me 3 days. And I only paid $170 for it because no one wants them. Oh and the GPS and 3G work unlike my previous Galaxy Nexus.

Software-wise, I mainly use Debian under VMWare for work. And Firefox for browsing natively. The builtin sync feature is good. mutt and notmuch for email. I run irssi and bitlbee for jabber on a server, which I connect to with mosh.

- 27" iMac (i5, 16GB RAM, 1TB) (dev + browsing)

- Win 7 PC (i7, 32GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 4TB storage), 2 x 29" (dev + some gaming)

- Win 8 PC (i7, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 8TB storage), 30" (mostly for entertainment)

- MacBook Air 11" (dev while travelling)

- Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 as my primary mobile devices.

- iPhone4, Lumia 900, a few random Android phones, for playing around.

Primary hardware: Dual 24", 1920x1200 monitors; IBM Model M keyboard (manufactured in 1990) still clicking strong; computer is a 4-year-old 2.67 GHz Core i7 920 (which is plenty adequate now that it has 24 GB RAM). Laptop is a 3-year-old Sony, purchased because it was the only model available at the time that was at the intersection of relatively small size (14" screen), highish resolution (1600x900), and Core i5.

Operating environment for both is Ubuntu 12.10 using xmonad as the WM; most hacking right now is in Clojure via Emacs.

Pretty happy with this setup, though I'd like a buckling-spring keyboard with a few more buckybits; I'm also contemplating a switch back to a Kinesis Contoured keyboard. The laptop will probably be looking at replacement sometime soon; Linux support for it has never gelled (power management and external monitors) though it's been generally adequate.

Asus G55VW, classified as a gaming laptop. I do not game.

- 15.6 inch screen on 1920 x 1080, 16GB of RAM, excellent cooling and noise control.

- Windows 8/Ubuntu.

The only regret so far is not getting the 17 inch model.

How about you share your configuration as well since you started the discussion? :)

Currently I'm using an Asus N56VM as my main computer, using Windows 7 along with Arch Linux. The laptop is really cool, have an i7 with 8 gigs of ram and has a 1920x1080 screen.

Thinking about buying an 27" imac nowadays. Mainly for ios development.

This is almost exactly me, except I have the 17-inch model.

Also dual-boot Ubuntu/Win8, though Win8 is just for games they don't have for linux. I'm a developer and 95% of time is spent in linux.

I find my 17-inch model is a little too large sometimes--barely fits in a backpack. But it's worth it when I sit down to code.

I think portability is the reason why I opted for the 15-inch model originally, but in the end it seems that I don't carry it outside that much. However, I can assure you that you made the right decision if you're using it for work/programming, it was a bit difficult at first to get used to such a high resolution on a 15-inch screen.

Thinkpad x220, 8gb RAM, i7, 2xSSD and run ArchLinux on it with Awesome WM, which is a really really great tiling window manager. At home I plug into a 23in screen, mouse and keyboard, which works really well.

How'd you squeeze 2 SSDs in there?

you have one normal drive bay for a 2.5inch ssd/hd and then you also have a msata connection below the keyboard next to the wifi card. it doubles as a pcie bus in which you could put a mobile broadband card or a msata ssd such as this one:

http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT480M50...

TIL they make msata ssd's .. very cool :)

Exact same laptop, distro and window manager, except it dual boots with Win 7 for Windows-only programs.

I also have a mid-2011 13" Macbook Air.

Since I've been doing iOS dev again, my X220 has been laying unused on a shelve, for around a year now. Shame on me, for its a very good machine.

15" Mid 2009 MBP and two 24" Benq screens (unfortunately TN panels). One screen is dedicated to a Windows 7 tower for more intensive processes (Q6600, 4GB ram). Apple Keyboard (with keypad) for programming, Das Keyboard for other things. Razer Deathadder mouse for both; I prefer gaming mice for everyday use. I use Synergy to share mouse and keyboard between Mac and Windows. 2TB network drive for sharing files and making backups.

It's pretty dated if I'm honest! Problems of a poor student.

Your idea of a poor student and mine are somewhat different!

Hahah reading it back I suppose it is quite a lot! I suppose I see people on here and Twitter with 27" Thunderbolt screens and MBP retinas and seem to adjust myself towards the poor end when in fact it's not the case with regards to my fellow students.

I initially got the 13" Macbook Air (maxed out) planning to only use it while on the go, but it's started to replace my desktop. It's a beast of a machine when plugged into an external monitor.

Most of my development is either done on OS X or in a Linux (generally Debian) VM through VMWare Fusion with Vagrant. For iOS development I use both Appcode and Xcode. Anything else is done in a Tmux/vim/zsh session.

- Macbook Pro 13" (128GB solid, 8GB RAM), magic mouse (I almost exclusively use the trackpad). - 2 year old custom built gaming rig (i7K @4Ghz, 16GB of Ram, GTX 580, 256GB Solid, 750GB secondary, 27" Samsung Monitor, Shitty logitech gaming keyboard, shitty cyborg 7 mouse)

I almost never use my pc other than as a media center and occasionally some hardcore games. All my work is done on my mac.

Forgot to mention it's the retina version.

Lenovo w520 w/ 8gb of RAM and i7. After a USB drive update from lenovo stopped Windows from booting completely switched to Debain Sid. It has a NVIDIA Optimus, but I think its turned off ATM. I also have the built in color calibration too but it doesn't work.

I also have a Logitech trackman and hope to someday live in a place bigger than a shoebox so I can use a damn monitor.

Win 7 PC (i5, 8GB RAM, SSD, very quiet), 27" Dell TFT display (U2711). HP washable keyboard, Logitech G3 mouse. Most of the work is done in PuTTY windows on remote servers.

I'd love to use the 24" iMac and the 13" Air more, but the (german) keyboard sucks for programming ({[]}@ etc.), even after remapping.

I miss my ThinkPad 720C, best laptop keyboard ever...

Lenovo Thinkpad T420, Mint 14, intel core i5, 16gb ram, nvidia nvs 4200m,60gb ocz ssd, and is regularly hooked up to a 22inch acer monitor.

2 x 24" LCD in landscape and 1 x 19" LCD in portrait mode. Connected to home built Core2 Duo 3.2GHz with 4G RAM. Running Ubuntu 13.04. Use a Samsung ChromeBook on the road.

This is sufficient since most of the real work happens on AWS with multiple instances and clients' AIX & HPUX clusters.

MacBook Air 2013 13"/8Gb/i7/128

Lenovo z580 15"/8Gb/750 with Arch Linux, i3wm

Sometimes I plug in a spare monitor if I need the extra screen space but I really prefer a portable setup.

Have you got any wireless connectivity issues with the Macbook Air?

No I haven't, it's been working fine for me so far.

Linux Mint 14 Nadia (upgrading to Mint 15 in the near future) on an Asus laptop with nvidia GPU and external keyboard, mouse, and monitor. I use the pre-installed Windows for games that don't play nicely with Wine.

Asus Zenbook prime 13" 1080p with an i5, 128gb ssd. Runs Fedora 19. Have a 23" 1080p monitor and cheap keyboard/mouse but I barely have it docked.

Thinkpad T430 (8GB RAM, i5 and Windows 8) and 1 lenovo wireless mouse. This is sufficient to take care of my coding needs

MacBook Air an external monitor (24 inch) Apple Keyboard Logitech Mouse

Me too! Except I use an Apple Trackpad.

Is the extra portability worth it with the Air? I still have a chunky 15" MBP with 16GB RAM (despite supposedly being limited to 8) but it's relatively heavy in the backpack.

I have the newer Macbook Pro 13" (retina & solid state) which is substantially lighter and more portable than previous Macbook Pros. While I typically work at the same area most of the time, it being light weight is definitely a bonus.

An air is even lighter and thinner.

I'd say compared to the a 13" Pro, the Air is noticeably lighter but not enough to be a deal-breaker if you value the Retina. For me personally, I was sold on the 2013 Air because of the battery life mostly. There's rumors of major changes to the Air in 2014, seeing as it hasn't changed in appearance since its release, so if you're willing to wait a bit longer it might be worth it.

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