Need a New Laptop for Programming

[Actuosity]

I'm taking a college programming course for the next two years. I was wondering what laptop's would best suit the needs of school, programming, and work weel for atleast 3 years. My budget is 1600$. If anyone could help me out that'dd be great

[rashdanml]

Thinkpads are excellent for programming. The new T440p is configurable with a wide range of specs.

[WanderingFool]

For my university experience, I personally bought a $500 laptop and was happy with it (If you have easy access to charging, I don't see too much of a need for a powerful laptop).   Admittedly though the laptop did take a bit of extra time during the computationally heavy tasks...but that is why I had a desktop at home.  A bigger thing is to think of version control to use...it makes things so much easier when you can just sync your working files between your laptop and home computer.  (Things like git, or svn...I used tortoiseSVN).

 

With all this said, the "work well for 3 years" will depend on how you treat your laptop.   I made my cheap laptops last 6 years (harddrive eventually broke)....with that said not everyone was as careful as me.  Sometimes the more expensive laptops are higher quality builds (Like the ones every one else recommended are better quality) so they will be likely more durable.  I find if you keep a laptop on a level surface, keep the battery unplugged unless you need to charge it, don't stack books on it, and make sure it has good ventilation.  So you could get away with a cheaper laptop, although if you do indeed have a higher budget getting a good quality one can just make life less stressful

[Raxxdude]

Might want to get a macbook for xcode if you plan on doing app work on the side. If not you can get a 500 or 600 dollar regular laptop and you will be plenty happy with it.

[lutzee]

With a budget of $1600 you have a lot of play room, an ultrabook will be great for carrying around, I don't notice mine being in my bag, where as my old 15.6" Vaio weighed too much and killed my back after a day. I highly recommend anything with a 1080p screen size, though having the text too small can be an issue with 1080p ultrabooks, there are some great form factor 15.6" laptops available now too, which would be idea. 

 

The lenovo u530 is a good option, make sure you get the 1080p model.

Alternitively the s540 is also a good option, if not better (you'll want to add more RAM than the default 4GB)

[wing2k5]

At $1600, you can pretty much get any notebook and it would be good for programming. I try to go for notebooks with a good capacty SSD for fast read/write responses and then maybe get an external HDD for storage.

 

Sony VAIO is a good choice.

[Nallown]

What sort of programming? If it's just general programming like coding then you won't something too crazy but if it's something that would require you to run vm's then go for something with at least 6gb ram and a i5 but I'm guessing that you won't be doing any sort of game dev so you won't need something too crazy so I'm guessing pretty much anything will do fine (this doesn't mean that you can get something that's like 10 years old ofcourse).

[madknight3]

If you want/need to develop any Mac or iOS applications then you should pick up a Macbook. You can develop for everything else on a Mac so it's the best option. If you have need or no interest in Mac or iOS development, then anything will be fine. It's unlikely that you'll be coding anything in school that even a budget laptop can't run perfectly fine.

 

Personally, I'd pick something thin and light with a good battery life and ssd for storage (like an ultrabook). The rest of the specs should be fine at your budget level.

[loganryan99]

All you need for programming is a computer fast enough to run the programs you write. 

[ygohome]

I think it will depend on what client side tools you will be using.  Will you need to do intensive work directly on the laptop itself that will require alot of resources?  

 

For me and the type of development/programming I do, I just need a dependable laptop that is not shit, with good keyboard, good display, good trackpad, decent RAM for VMs.  Then I look at other features that are important to me... ports for external display(s), usb3 or eSata, docking ability, weight and size, etc.  And if you dock the laptop then you can ignore if it has crappy keyboard/display/trackpad since you can plug in whatever you like.   Of course, I look at what CPU and GPU it has too, but that is not really important for the programming I do (but I do like to game sometimes).

 

Almost everything I do from my laptop involves being connected to a remote server... nearly all of the source code ultimately gets compiled, run on a server.  My source code is managed/archived in a remote repository on a server.  I only keep the working copies on my laptop for the code that I'm working on.  

 

Basically, just spec your new laptop to what you'll plan using it for.  Sorry, I realize I'm only stating the obvious.

 

Below are some gratuitous screenshots from my 2009 MBP laptop to show what I mean.  Each of the screenshots are in separate virtual desktops.  Nothing I'm doing below is using much resources.  The Windows VM is using some RAM and CPU, of course, but the point is that programming/development/work is all happening on remote servers. 

 

*Yeah, I use OS X (please no hate )

 

a few terminal shells and x11 windows open as I install Oracle EBS on a remote Linux server from my laptop.

 

vnc fullscreen to see the remote linux desktop

 

windows 7 VM fullscreen as I test Oracle Apps (running from the Oracle linux app servers) in an IE10 browser

 

database programming in pl/sql... using Oracle Client connected to database server

 

showing all of the virtual desktops I was running

 

everything I do from my laptop is really just connecting to other boxes.   If a Core 2 Duo from five years ago still meets my software/development needs then you will probably be safe with just about anything you choose to buy, as long as it is good quality.   I'm not saying or suggesting you buy a Macbook Pro or Air, but If your situation will be similar to mine where you will be mostly connected to remote machines, then just take that into consideration when looking at hardware specs.  

 

Good luck

[ultimatemythbuster]

You can get a good laptop for far less than that and you don't really need anything too powerful for programming. Maybe a Sony Vaio or something that is reliable, 6GB RAM, Intel i5 or higher or AMD equivalent will do perfectly, anything more would be overkill but is always nice and I would recommend getting a HDD caddy and removing the DVD drive if it has one as they are redundant now. Install a SSD in the main sata spot with the OS and a 500GB - 1TB HDD in the caddy where the DVD drive used to be. Some software programs can take a while to load up and the SSD will make things so much faster!

 

Whatever you do I would suggest not going anywhere near an Apple laptop for programming...

Unless your going to Bootcamp it or have Windows in a VM.  I see alot of people with Apple laptops in my classes.

[KyonCoraeL]

Have you considered looking at laptops on a used market like kijiji or Craigslist or some refurb website? There is a surprising amount of deals out there. There is a website for buying refurbished macs from apple and it automatically collates it but I can't remember the name right now.

 

I currently have a T430s, the battery life is terrible but it is quite quick and I also have an additional hard drive caddy which allows me to use a 1Tb hard drive on top of having a 256Gb Samsung SSD and I have room for an additional msata. 

 

I think there are some additional questions that I would like to ask you. How important is batttery life to you? What size/weight laptop would you like?

[Opcode]

You don't need anything special for compiling code, something even like this would fit the bill (Intel, decent memory size, 1600x900 screen). Don't need to spend big bucks to compile code, just target Intel based laptops if you want faster compile times. If you're getting into game programming, then you might want to consider something that also has a semi beefy GPU for running said games. But if you aren't doing any 3D programming, you don't need a monster of a machine.

[eike93]

if it were me than i would have gone with a lenovo yoga 13

[brob]

Large, high res screen. The more desktop real estate the better. Pain to lug around but worth it, imo.

[arkon]

Actually yeah, a Mac would be a good choice for programming, since you can easily switch between the 3 different OSs that you'll probably end up using.

[Opcode]

Actually yeah, a Mac would be a good choice for programming, since you can easily switch between the 3 different OSs that you'll probably end up using.

If you want to pay twice as much for half the hardware. Especially for programming a Mac is a bad idea, he will be more than likely working with Visual Studio. So he will definitely need a Windows based machine. He will also get more hardware for the same price as a decent Mac. I don't buy Apple products for that reason, they rip you off by selling you a label. He should stick to a Windows machine, it will be faster and last him longer in the long run. You can buy a OS X disk for under $30 and load it up in VirtualBox, the same goes for Linux. Three OS's in one, and faster hardware than a Mac.

[jam08060]

So, here is a list of features I look for in a programming notebook starting with the most important...

• 8GB Ram - I find myself consistently caching around 6.5-7 GB of ram when I'm programming since I usually run a virtual machine or two and generally have a billion chrome tabs open...
• 1080p+ resolution display (IPS) - I hate tn panels with a passion and anything under 1080p just doesn't provide me with enough screen real estate...
• 128GB+ SSD - Just makes everything faster... literally... everything... boot times, program loading times, drive-thrus, lines at theme parks... everything...
• i5, or i7 Quad Core CPU - It doesn't really matter to me whether or not it has hyper threading, the most important part for me is having 4 real cores.
• Good Keyboard - DO NOT take this lightly, make sure all of the keys on the laptop you purchase are in the correct place and are the correct size for your taste.  I hate short backspace keys.  The thing that probably pissed me off the most out of any laptop I have ever owned was on a Lenovo think pad; the ctrl and the fn keys were swapped... I literally turned into the hulk every time I tried to press ctrl+c or ctrl+v and instead typed a c or a v.
• Ports - I would highly suggest 3-4 USB3 & USB 2 ports(or at least just USB3), an Ethernet port,  and a VGA port for connecting to external projectors at the bare minimum...
• Good quality headphones - I listen to music when I program, so this is a must for me... and as you can see... we have left the list of features and moved on to peripherals...
• Mouse - I prefer corded so I don't have to constantly change batteries and I also like having something that has a high sensitivity... but that's just my preference...

Can't really think of anything else so...

Hope this helps!

 

Edit: Also, please note... you can program for apple devices on both Linux and Windows systems... so there's that... anyone who says otherwise is just flat out wrong lol...

[arkon]

Edit: Also, please note... you can program for apple devices on both Linux and Windows systems... so there's that... anyone who says otherwise is just flat out wrong lol...

 

You mean with Xamarin? It's not exactly the best way though.

[rashdanml]

You mean with Xamarin? It's not exactly the best way though.

IIRC, Mono and Xamarin are for developing C# and .NET on non-Windows machines. Apple devices usually use Objective-C. 

GNUstep works for Apple development on Linux machines, and possibly Windows machines. 

[madknight3]

IIRC, Mono and Xamarin are for developing C# and .NET on non-Windows machines. Apple devices usually use Objective-C. 

GNUstep works for Apple development on Linux machines, and possibly Windows machines. 

That is very inconvenient if you do a lot of coding for Mac or iOS. You really do want to just be using XCode hassle free. You need to have a mac for testing purposes anyway.

[tbc]

something to consider that I don't think anyone mentioned.

 

highly consider something with replaceable parts.  you DO NOT want to be stuck 3-4 weeks without a laptop because replacing an SSD requires sending it to a factory in taiwan because the SSD is soldered into the motherboard.

[jam08060]

You mean with Xamarin? It's not exactly the best way though.

 

Its just objective C...

 

all you need is a text editor and a compiler...

[arkon]

Its just objective C...

 

all you need is a text editor and a compiler...

 

I don't think I've ever met anybody who would even consider developing an app with just a text editor and a compiler...

[brob]

I don't think I've ever met anybody who would even consider developing an app with just a text editor and a compiler...

 

:lol:  :lol: :lol:  My first program was written on punch cards.