Laptop Recommendations

[David Schwartz]

I’m surprized that people even bother asking questions like this these days, especially when it comes to Linux.

You can run Linux in a system with an 800 MHz Atom CPU, 256 MB of RAM and 20 GB HDD and it runs just fine.

There are tiny Media boxes you can get for $50 that have 1.2 GHz ARMs, 4 GB of RAM, gigabit WiFi, and you can plug in as much storage as you want via USB.

My 10-year old Dell Inspiron 9300 has a 1.6 GHz Centrino CPU, 3 GB of RAM, and a 120 GB HDD, and while it’s slow to boot Win XP, it runs most apps just fine. (It needs a new battery, tho.)

My current machine is a MacBook Pro with a 2.7 GHz quad-core i7, 768 GB SSD, and 16 GB of RAM. I run it with a second 24” HD display, and it’s configured with 20 desktops (10 up and 10 down). I do all of my Windows development in a VMWare VM running Windows 7. It’s fast and I suspect will last a very long time. And under the hood, it’s running some Unix variant (Mach, which is I think a BSD derivative).

The thing that kills it  (and every other computer I use) is browser windows. Browsers leak memory like crazy. Every one of them.

Last fall I bought an ASUS laptop with Win 7 on it from Best Buy for $275 because MS was about to ship Win 8, so the retailers were flushing out everything at a big discount. I don’t even remember how it’s configured, only that it was a screaming deal at the time.

Buy whatever you can afford that’s fairly new. It’ll probably work just fine.

As for the disk … I’d recommend a Seagate Hybrid Drive. Get the 1TB with 8 or 16 GB of cache. They’re under $100 and nearly as fast as an SSD.

(BTW, a word of warning: once you go hybrid or SSD, you’ll want to poke your eyes out waiting for stuff to open up on machines with regular HDDs on them!)

-David 



On Aug 12, 2014, at 5:25 PM, Mark Phillips <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz> wrote:

> Does anyone use an Dell XPS15 or M3800 laptop? I am looking at these two models, or perhaps the developer edition with Ubuntu pre-installed. I have read that these machines get really hot...to the point of the machine crashing. Just wondering about anyone's personal experience.
> 
> Also, any recommendations for other brands? I am looking for a core i7, at least 8 GB or RAM, and a large SSD to run Debian. Many of the "native linux" machines are huge and thick....I liked these two Dell models as they have a sleeker design and don't weigh 10 lbs. 
> 
> Any thoughts on whether to have a small SSD for the OS and a companion hard drive for data, or just blow a wad on a huge SSD (1 TB) for both OS and data?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Mark