What laptops would you buy for development work ?

Question

If you were to buy a laptop for development work which one would you buy ?

I know that desktops are much more efficient and definitively the only way in the long run, but nevertheless.

The budget up to 2000$.

Answer 1

Macbook Pro FTW :)

Vista flies on it.

Answer 2

I bought a Lenovo T60p about 2.5 years ago, and I'm still happy with it. If I was to get another PC, I would get another Lenovo. Although I'm thinking about Mac for my next laptop.

Answer 3

If you're doing web development, I'd argue strongly against your "desktops are . . . the only way" statement. But I digress :-)

I'd go for a Macbook Pro. Yes, I'm a Mac man, but that's not the main reason. I do do web development primarily, and a Mac is the only legal way to test in both Mac OS and Windows. Then there's the ease of setting up an Apache-based development environment and the plethora of great developer tools that you can get for OS X.

EDIT:

To be fair/more helpful, if you absolutely won't buy a Mac, I'll recommend Lenovo. I'm using a just-pre-Lenovo IBM Thinkpad for a lot of stuff, and it's a pleasure to work with. It's a strong, sturdy laptop. Before his passing, my father worked for IBM, and the Lenovo machines he had toward the end were just as solid as my Thinkpad.

Answer 4

Get a MacBook Pro. You can run windows on it if you want.

With VirtualBox, Parallels etc. you can run Windows at the same time.

Answer 5

I have a lenovo T61p and an external monitor. Great as a development platform. I haven't done development on anything except a laptop for almost 5 years. I don't see any advantage to the desktop.

Answer 6

Also have a look at this question:

What is the best Laptop for programmers?

Answer 7

For my money, I go to the Dell online outlet, and look at 17" laptops with things built in that I won't change later:

• 17" WUXGA (1920x1200) display
• Core 2 duo with good cache
• Good graphics card (don't game often, but when I do I don't want to have a bad one in the way)
• WiFi radio (At least G, keep an eye out for N)
• If I want MS software I get it bundled (cheaper if I don't have a license)

Everything else of value can be upgraded, although I'd seriously look at getting a cellular modem built in. Memory, HD, optical drive can all be inexpensively upgraded later.

If you can afford it, go for a fast hard drive, and put the maximum amount of memory your OS and laptop supports as soon as you can - these will both vastly decrease your compile time.

Oh, and don't get a laptop without a 4 year onsite warranty - it really is worth the extra few hundred - seriously.

Beyond that, depends on what else you do with your system.

But for development - lots of pixels, fast processor, lots of memory, fast hard drive.

Answer 8

Lenovo T61p ThinkPad about 6 months running. I beefed it up, and still managed to keep it under $2000.

Answer 9

I'm very happy with both my Dell XPS M1530 and Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi2428.

They are about the same specs, but the keyboard and monitor on the Dell is superior to the FSC.

They also have (the same) decent graphics card if you're interested in some casual gaming (or graphics programming), but they both tend to overheat when rendering anything "interesting" for an extended period.

Answer 10

For me it must have some ability to run dual screens. Using the on-board screen and one (DVI if possible) external screen is OK. Sometimes the offset in heights of the screens and native resolutions was hard to get used to.

Even better would be two external screens (on board disabled and using an external keyboard as well). I managed to do this with a Thinkpad and a docking station. The best! I liked having a dual screen workstation setup at your primary desk - but still being able to pick-up the laptop and work anywhere.

The downside is that I worked a lot less with the machine undocked - so I never really became proficient with the laptop's keyboard and touchpad. Also, the on-board LCD was lower res then the external screens - so I always had to fiddle with docking windows in my IDE, font sizes, etc when not docked.

Also, in-general the on-board LCD screen of a laptop is a concern. My Dell e1705's big beautiful WUXGA glossy screen is great for games/video... but text rendering kinda sucks (at least black-on-white text). Viewing angles are not the best as well.

EDIT: I cross posted this to the older question

Answer 11

I used an IBM/Lenovo t43p for 3 yrs with lots of success. I recently switched to a macbook pro and I am very happy with it. I had never previously owned or for that matter used a mac. The learning curve wasn't bad. I had experience with *nix so that helped with some things.

I am not sure if I would ever go back to a desktop after having a laptop that can do the job just fine. I used multiple monitors on my IBM and an extra monitor on the mac.

Answer 12

I've been doing web and scientific development on both a MacBook Pro and EeePC 900 for a year in the first case and 6 months in the latter. The key is really whether you want to use the laptop as a portable desktop or as a laptop computer. Having done a lot of development on the train, the MBP doesn't have the battery life and is far too hot (esp. when running analyses in SAS) for a train journey but works fine when combined with a Griffin Elevator stand as a desktop replacement. The EeePC is great as it runs cool and fits on one of the fold down trays on trains and planes, although it falls down when it comes to memory/CPU intensive tasks.

This all seems a bit anecdotal, but it's worth bearing in mind what you need to do and where you need to do it.