Need a New Laptop for Programming

[polyx95]

As some already said get a Mac Book Pro retina 13" with 8 or 16gb of ram and 256gb ssd. It will be quite cheap with student discount on apple.com 

Build quality and battery life is the best in its class. Also if you will want to get into developing for iOS or Mac it is the best option. Also mac allows to quite easily develop for both windows and linux.

 

 

Edit: oh I forgot to mention that with battery of mac book (around 5-6hours of coding) allows to not carry the charger with you and you can go work at a coffee shop without problems 

[polyx95]

Ok, bringing things to topic.

I would suggest the Surface Pro 2, especially if you have good eyes to use it at Windows 100% DPI scaling.

I use the Surface Pro 2 for university (Computer Science), and for work (personal project, and actual work.. like I go to work with my Surface Pro 2, and do work directly on it)

Why the Surface Pro 2?

1- Run full Windows 8.1 Pro, so that you can run your favorite programs like: OneNote 2013 for the best note taking software around, Visual Studio, Eclipse, NetBeans, Virtual Machine of your choice for Linux based OS, etc.

2- Fast! Crazy Fast! No cheap out done at the inside. The SSD used is really fast, no "SSD just to say it has an SSD, but in reality its the slowest SSD you can get". They put a real fast one. System boots up (power to desktop) in less than 6sec. Programs installs fast, program starts fairly fast. Beside that, LPDDR3 memory is used (low powered DDR3) at 1600MHz (fastest speed that the CPU supports), so again, no cheap stuff. I guess the only thing that "sucks" on the system is the web cam. It's your usual 720p like on most ultrabooks. Fine for Skype however. Stereo Speakers are neat and pretty good, in my opinion for such such device. And the mic is pretty darn good as well. I have no problem recording class.

3- Real power under the hood, with a Core i5 dual core 1.9GHz (2.9GHz with Turbo Boost). And the Turbo Boost is not throttled. It will spike a few times at 2.9GHz, and mostly be at 2.8GHz. The Surface pro dual ultra quiet, high quality fans, and large copper with heatpipe heatsink will handle it. The system will only get warm at worst. Not hot, despite it's small size. It

4- Digitize pen by Wacom. One thing you probably forgot to question yourself, and soon realize, with a laptop, you can't do diagrams, you can't do math, you can't do graphs, you can't enter math symbols. Ok well you CAN, but good luck. The time you do what you need to be done the professor will be completely ahead of you, and you'll be so behind. I know I had a laptop.

The digitize pen is no tow in the Surface Pro 2. It uses Wacom technology with 1024 pressure point detection, making your hand within look like you did it on paper, and the tracking (after full 273 point calibration to your hand and position) very good (the entire pen is being tracked with Wacom technology, that is why you need to do such big calibration, it's downside of the technology, but, currently, it's the best you can get). You can opt to get a similar device as the Surface Pro 2, that features N-Trig, but you can't write small, and tracking response time is lagging, plus the pen need a special battery to operate (AAAA - that's 4x A's, not 3)

5- Gorgeous 1080p IPS panel with wide angle and very good response rate.

6- Great battery life, varying between 4h to 12h based on settings, and what you do. For me, I can get well over a school day with it (10am to 5pm, and still have Windows report more than 3 hours left), and that's me using the display at ~30% most of the time, but 0% at times for classes where the prof turns off the light for the projector. And record 1 class, using wifi for web surfing/e-mail (Outlook) running on the back. Bluetooth off (I don't use it). A power keyboard is coming soon, where it will be a physical keyboard like the Type Cover 2, but with battery

7- High build quality everywhere, magnesium construct, attention to details, where even the USB ports enclosure are in titanium black to hide them, and the cuts for the connectors are exact to hide the connector

8- The add-on keyboard Type Cover 2, feature almost standard size keys allowing you to get used to it fairly fast. If I had to say anything bad about it, is the Home, End, Page Up and Page Down keys are being shared with F9, F10, F11, and F12, which are keyboard shortcuts in Visual Studio. So you have to use the Fn key, or switch their roles with Fn+Caps Lock. Touchpad is OK. It's actually a good one, but due to the small form factor of the device, the touchpad needs to be small and can't have physical button, which degrade the usage. But, in any case you'll use the touchscreen or most likely have a laptop mouse in any case. I love the fact that you can flip the keyboard backwards, disabling the keys, and protecting the back when in tablet mode.

9- Junk free. Full Windows 8.1 recovery inside. Best Windows experience you'll get. The only potential "junk", is Office 2013 trial/activator pre-installed. Which, is good if you want to buy it in any case. It's simple and quick to uninstall it from Program & Features panel. The device is so clean, that all the drivers control panel and all that are just not there. Microsoft took pride to keep all drivers sleek and slim, which I think also contributes in it's fast performance.

10- Not locked. Despite what you may think, the device is not locked to Windows 8.1. Secure Boot in the UEFI menu can be disabled, and you can install Linux based OS (although I would not recommend it), and some even installed a MacOS on it (hackintosh)

11- Has a MicroSD card for storage expansion, and standard USB 3.0 plug for allowing you to connect anything you want. While 1 might seam limiting, so far, I did not find it limited. I usually have my mouse attached on it, if anything. The rest I just use SkyDrive, to sync my files with my desktop. After doing some analysis on the Surface Pro 2, I can say with confidence, that Microsoft didn't put 1 USB ports just for giggles. I see no way they could have put a second one. You either have the hinge system for the kick-stand in the way, or speakers. Now, of course, this assumes current design. I am sure, things can be engineerly solved by reworking the hinge system to be more in, inside of the edge to still work great, and allow a another USB port. But my point is that, assuming this is the best they could have done so far, its not lacking because they didn't want, there is a reason behind it.

I can spend all day talking about the Surface Pro 2. But everyone that saw it are truly impressed with it. If you give me 3k, and tell me you can buy any computer today, I'll say Surface Pro 2, and you keep the change. If only had a powerful Nvidia or AMD GPU, it could completely replace my desktop, and I would have no problem doing so.

Review:

(small error in the view, Lisa points the microSD card reader and say it's a speaker). I do remember reading somewhere about her apologizing fir the slip of tongue. Lastly, the unit in the review is a Core i5 1.6GHz, that's the old CPU model. Microsoft decided to do a small CPU upgrade. Also, Microsoft did release an update which improve the battery life since the review was done).

On number 4. Have you heard about latex dude? Makes math on pc really fast. Graphing I do agree but it is easily solved by carrying a small textbook where you draw diagrams by hand and when you get home just scan them into your notes.

[GoodBytes]

Yes I heard about LaTeX. The most retarded thing ever. The simplest thing is so over complicated, and horrible for doing math.

You can do symbols quickly, but the layout? Forget about it. Then at the end of teh day, you are stuck with a lousy PDF, which you need to convert to OneNote (so re-write everything) so that is makes sense.

[igotsnomoney]

if your willing to spend all of the budget, go for the retina macbook pro 13" (and get the upgraded one with 256gb of ssd and 8gb of ram, you will need it) . its a pretty good laptop, and you have access to Xcode for iOS and osx development. Vm software is decently affordable so windows and linux are still very viable options. The nice high resolution screen is less taxing on the eyes, and quite good brightness.  but as a CS student myself, the macbook pro really does have a good advantage where has 2 mini dp so you can digitally output to 2 external monitors which is definitely a time saver. That + OSX spaces (Its basically parallel desktop environments) provides an incredible amount of flexibility and screen real estate

 

Personally  I use the 13" screen as a api reference or just internet referencing. I then have a samsung SA650 23" monitor for most of my writing, on sublime text 3. And then I bought a ASUS PB238Q for a mix between a second sublime text instance, or a debugger. 

[enderslame]

Hey guys, I'm pretty much in the same boat as the OP and was wondering if anything new has come out in the last few months that changes everyone's recommendations? I'm really tempted to just get the macbook Air 13 due to wanting to do iOS development and pretty much everyone here agreeing it's one of the best programming laptop. But on the other hand I really want retina so might go for the pro 13..Has anyone used the Yoga 2?

[GoodBytes]

Hey guys, I'm pretty much in the same boat as the OP and was wondering if anything new has come out in the last few months that changes everyone's recommendations? I'm really tempted to just get the macbook Air 13 due to wanting to do iOS development and pretty much everyone here agreeing it's one of the best programming laptop. But on the other hand I really want retina so might go for the pro 13..Has anyone used the Yoga 2?

Wow, no.

Unless you want an inexpensive Apple portable computer for iOS development, it is not a good choice for programming.

The listed up sides don't makes it a good programming laptop. Yes you need performance, yes you need RAM (4GB - 8GB depending on planned project size, more so if doing gaming dev with large scale engine), but you also have teh keyboard. A key component of the programming. You NEED: F5, F10, F11 keys, and you need standard size keys, good typing experience, Home, End, PageUp, PageDown keys. You also need AT LEAST 1080p to get started.

 

If you do meetings you may want pen functionality for drawing plans, or note taking, but that is more of a bonus not a must.

If you are at school, get the Surface Pro 3. While you will have to share End, PageUp, PageDown with F10, F11, and F12 keys, the Fn key is easily accessible with the same hand with your thumb, so it is not too problematic. F5 key might be annoying one, but you can actually take notes, it's light, small, compact, long battery life, you have serious power under your hands.

 

If not, then get the Yoga 2 or the ThinkPad Yoga, both are excellent choices as well. They both will get you a full standard size keyboard with all the needed keys.

 

If you REALLY want to do iOS development, than an Apple computer is the only choice. I would get a MacBook Pro for the needed performance, and higher resolution screen.