Laptop Reccomendations
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Is the MBP designed for portability or as a mobile workstation? That makes a huge difference on battery life.
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Why are people buying MBPs? Most people don't need MBPs for performance, a MBA (Got one
) works wonders for most tasks. -
I use a MBP because I run a full Windows development session at times.
When purchased, I was also supposed to start learning Apple's language for iOS development, but that changed do to client changes. -
@Dashrender said:
Is the MBP designed for portability or as a mobile workstation? That makes a huge difference on battery life.
It's a mobile workstation. The Air is the super portable one. But it feels much less portable to me than some of its competitors that I have used. All laptops have portability as some portion of their functionality. Otherwise, it would be a desktop
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The display of an MBA might be to small for a full time task driver.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
Why are people buying MBPs? Most people don't need MBPs for performance, a MBA (Got one
) works wonders for most tasks.Full development environment needs to be able to be fired up. It's huge. An Air won't even run it
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For the non programmer. What is a development environment?
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Nearly always I would prefer an MBA and I'm going to push for one at my next refresh. I need the big screen, though, so that is an issue. Trying to figure out how to deal with that when mobile.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
For the non programmer. What is a development environment?
Everything needed to do programming. In some cases, that's just notepad. But in this case, I need a full environment including running web servers, load balancers, several databases, copies of live data, tons of applications, etc. It uses a ton of memory and CPU power.
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Again, not a programmer but...
What's wrong with using those resources remotely so that the laptop becomes just an interface to do the work? A more reliable desktop/server with far better performance so that programming goes quicker surely is the way to go?
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@scottalanmiller said:
Nearly always I would prefer an MBA and I'm going to push for one at my next refresh. I need the big screen, though, so that is an issue. Trying to figure out how to deal with that when mobile.
This is what I figured. But if you need a mobile workstation, plugging in shouldn't really be a problem for you, at most a minor inconvenience. Though I can see the argument about not wanting to have to own/carry two devices around for difference uses. We just aren't there yet.... Unless you are saying your $900 HP is there and gives you everything you want, power and long battery life.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
Again, not a programmer but...
What's wrong with using those resources remotely so that the laptop becomes just an interface to do the work? A more reliable desktop/server with far better performance so that programming goes quicker surely is the way to go?
That's how I would design it. For reasons, we don't handle it that way.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@s.hackleman said:
Let me get this helmet on, and a fire suit... Ok..
I have been really happy with my Macbook Pro...
Go ahead, let me have it.
I have one. Don't like it. Here are some of my concerns...
- It is slow. REALLY slow. Slower than several year old, 20% the cost HP laptops that I have.
- It's heavy. Way too heavy for a lot of travel.
- It's fragile. Bump anything and it dents. You have to seriously baby this thing.
- It overheats way too easily.
- The magnetic power cord can't hold itself in and if you don't set it up to be held in, it's own weight practically unplugs it.
- For an large laptop it lacks a lot of plugs that you would find handy to have.
- Crashes more than any other OS I've used since and including Windows XP. It seems to be equivalent to Windows 2000 in that regards.
- Battery life is really poor.
- Price
I can honestly say other than price, I haven't had any of those issues, and I have switched teams. I get at least 4-5 hours battery life. I have a Windows 7 Ult. VM with 2 processors, and a Ubuntu 14 VM with 1 running full time, and I haven't had to wait on processor or disc on my end once. Other than large software builds. More plugs would be nice, but it hasn't been a issue yet. I would suggest a Mac running VM fusion as a great development system. Sorry to hear you have been so unhappy with yours.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Nearly always I would prefer an MBA and I'm going to push for one at my next refresh. I need the big screen, though, so that is an issue. Trying to figure out how to deal with that when mobile.
This is what I figured. But if you need a mobile workstation, plugging in shouldn't really be a problem for you, at most a minor inconvenience. Though I can see the argument about not wanting to have to own/carry two devices around for difference uses. We just aren't there yet.... Unless you are saying your $900 HP is there and gives you everything you want, power and long battery life.
Yup, the HP covered what I needed but isn't what we use where I work now. The only thing it lacked (and it is three years old) was enough memory capacity.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
Again, not a programmer but...
What's wrong with using those resources remotely so that the laptop becomes just an interface to do the work? A more reliable desktop/server with far better performance so that programming goes quicker surely is the way to go?
That's how I would design it. For reasons, we don't handle it that way.
- 13 hour plane flights.
- No access to the internet for other reasons
- the remote site has no internet access
- no/less lag when typing quickly.
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@s.hackleman said:
I can honestly say other than price, I haven't had any of those issues, and I have switched teams. I get at least 4-5 hours battery life. I have a Windows 7 Ult. VM with 2 processors, and a Ubuntu 14 VM with 1 running full time, and I haven't had to wait on processor or disc on my end once. Other than large software builds. More plugs would be nice, but it hasn't been a issue yet. I would suggest a Mac running VM fusion as a great development system. Sorry to hear you have been so unhappy with yours.
No VMs running, I'm on pure Mac OSX. Part of the reason that I agreed to go Mac was to force myself to use it and learn it. There are upsides, it's not all negative, the screen is great, the sound is good, the keyboard is pretty nice, the plugs that ARE there are solid (other than the power), I've come to like the trackpad once getting used to it and I really like how easily I can switch between full screen running processes. As I become less of a noob and more of a power user (more I said, I'm not by any stretch) it definitely improves but after six months on it, I don't feel like it's an easy to use system, just easier.
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@JaredBusch said:
That's how I would design it. For reasons, we don't handle it that way.
- 13 hour plane flights.
- No access to the internet for other reasons
- the remote site has no internet access
- no/less lag when typing quickly.
Those are all pretty big. And mostly that covers it. Especially for me, traveling and having flaky Internet is a big deal. Or when I do, there is lag as it is from Europe to the US.
I think, though, after this cycle, that I've shown that I could do everything that I need with the MBA. So I hope to switch at some point.
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@s.hackleman said:
Let me get this helmet on, and a fire suit... Ok..
I have been really happy with my Macbook Pro...
Go ahead, let me have it.
I don't have a problem with the per se. other than them calling it a Macbook Pro when there is no longer anything professional about them. Apple has ditched the creative professional world thinking they could make more if they consumerized it. Yet, they have left the word "pro" on all the stuff they consumerized. a lot of people have been switching to windows from mac in the professional world.
The Kept Macbook "Pro" - Not a thing is any longer upgradable
Mac "Pro" again just the ram is upgradable. No PCIe slots, external bays cost $3,000+ for cards.
Final Cut "Pro" a consumerized more advanced iMovie, more akin to Adobe's "Elements" type software.Sad thing is the pro market used to be their primary user base.
Youtube Video -
@Breffni-Potter said:
Again, not a programmer but...
What's wrong with using those resources remotely so that the laptop becomes just an interface to do the work? A more reliable desktop/server with far better performance so that programming goes quicker surely is the way to go?
Licensing in some cases.
Also you don't have internet connections everywhere. -
@dafyre said:
If you like Acer, I've got an Acer V3 17.3" Laptop. (16g RAM, Nvidia umm... something or another w/4GB RAM). It works really nicely or playing games. Skyrim runs on Max settings without batting an eye.
I'm not sure about the CUDA stuff, but it does really nicely when ripping my DVDs to MP4 or ISO. It was about $1,300 with a square trade warranty and all.
I actually looked that those, but they seem hard to come buy. there were a couple on ebay, and one was from a guy with zero feeback so I passed. Looks nice for the price though.
