http://ayende.comAyende @ RahienCopyright (C) Ayende Rahien 2004 - 2021 (c) 202660I have also bought an Acer 3810tz I have few complaints except for the trackpad buttons which require too much force. Definitely needs an SSD drive. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment76http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment76Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:13:57 GMTI was faced with the same problem about a year ago. I came back to my home town after an year living in London. I sold all my stuff in the UK (including my notebook), so I had to buy a new one. I went with a Sony Vaio, which proved to be quite "ok". An oportunity presented to buy an Alienware M15x in November 2009. I don't think I'll get back to another brand ever. I had a Macbook Pro 15'' and even though the m15x is a little heavier, I'd go with it over the MBP a thousand times again. Awesome quality (specially if you are using WIndows, because you get several features including face-recognition login), amazing performance (mine is I7 quad, 4gb DDR3, 500gb HDD and a 1GB DDR5 Nvidia graphics card). A friend of mine got the same one,but he got Solid State. It's a little faster, but I need the HDD space, so I couldn't go with a 240gb drive. I got both Ubuntu and Windows 7 coexisting in the same machine and it works GREAT! I'm well aware that, as the other commenters, I'm biased. I hope I am less biased, since I already owned HP, Dell, Acer, Apple, Sony and Alienware Notebooks. Being a developer that needs the horsepower and a consumer that just can't stand to wait those 5 seconds to open a browser window I would say definitely go with the Alienware. As for the plane argument, every time I travel I use it on a plane. It's a little bigger than the MBP, but you can always go with the 13'' one. I wouldn't, though, since the Alienware screen is a thing of BEAUTY. I hope that helps! Cheers, Bernardo Heynemann Dev @ globo.com http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment75http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment75Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:07:32 GMTI've found that a top end laptop requires too much more cash for the performance improvement. The cheaper ones are far more economical - you can afford to throw 3 of them in the bin for the price of a "high end" one. I went for an Acer Timeline laptop (bottom-range 3810TZ one!). 8h (!) on batteries with heavy work in Visual Studio and SQL 2008 for a mere 500GBP. Plus it's an inch think, has a decent 13.3" screen, has HDMI and weighs only 1.6Kg. It's getting an SSD in it when the prices drop slightly. I cannot tell the difference between that (with a 1.3GHz Dual core Intel SU4100) and my main workstation which is a quad core 2.4GHz machine for 95% of what I do. IMHO, 99% of laptop purchases are penis envy related. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment74http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment74Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:52:05 GMT"but I can’t really justify purchasing a new Mac" Do it anyway! And get the new cinema display too. And don't look back... http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment73http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment73Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:52:35 GMTWhatever you do, get SSD. I have a Lenovo Thinkpad, and the SSD makes a world if difference during development. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment72http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment72Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:48:36 GMTI just bought a new Lenovo W510 and love it. I spent US$1900, w/ 3yr warranty, but only 4GB RAM. You could up that for about $300 to 8GB and have a nice machine. It has a nice large keyboard, wide screen, and it feels solid. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment71http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment71Sat, 13 Feb 2010 02:13:57 GMTI just got a quad core 17" screen HP dv7 that has been working really well for me - $1000. At work I watch all the people with macbooks fiddling with and bitching about things that are wrong because they run windows in a VM... Whilest I happily work away on all 4 cores. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment70http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment70Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:09:47 GMTYou guys know he's going to end up buying a Macbook anyway, right? :) http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment69http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment69Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:13:07 GMTLenovo ThinkPad W510 looks really cool. [blogs.technet.com/.../...10-first-impressions.aspx](http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2010/02/07/lenovo-thinkpad-w510-first-impressions.aspx) http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment68http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment68Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:22:06 GMTWhat better than an Italian design to replace apple ? [http://www.altroview.com/?module=features&index=3](http://www.altroview.com/?module=features&index=3) The Multi-Touch Touchpad Forget about old touchpads - now everything is possible with Altro®. - Enlarge or reduce pictures using two fingers? That's possible - we call it Two-Finger Pinch Zoom - Rotate a picture using two fingers? That's possible - we call it Chiral Rotate - Scroll a web page without using a mouse? That's possible, and with just one finger - we call it Linear Scrolling - Launch your preferred applications without having to search them? That's possible - we call it Three-Finger Down Innovate to make things easier - that's Altro®. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment67http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment67Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:26:47 GMTJust picked up a Dell Studio 15 Core i7 for £550 and then spent another £800 to upgrade it to 8Gb RAM and a 256Gb SSD. This should hopefully make the VMs fly! Used to spend a lot on laptops, but a friend suggested rather than spending £2k and making it last 3-4 years, spend £500-600 and treat as a dispoable item. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment66http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment66Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:04:25 GMTLenovo's LS510 is simply amazing. It's powerful, it's quite, and it's light even though it's big (15.4" I think). My mom has it. I couldn't believe when I came to visit and saw that magnificent beast... I borrow it any chance I get (when we're in the same country), simply because it feels so no working on it. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment65http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment65Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:14:19 GMTThe most important thing is the SSD. I use a T61p which is almost 3 years old - running VS 2008, MSSQL, MySQL ..... Changed from 1st gen SSD (Mtron) to OCZ Vertex resently, and this beauty is still running lightning fast. Faster than any new laptop with traditional hard drives on it. If you want a laptop as a workstation, the SSD is cruisial. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment64http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment64Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:46:15 GMTSteven, You can upgrade the RAM and hard drive your self as they are deemed user replaceable and will not affect your warranty (assuming you don't put a screw driver through your cpu or something like that). I concede that the mac tax is ridiculous when it comes to customising your mac and adding upgrades like additional ram etc, but you can always purchase an ssd or additional ram from places like crucial.com for a fraction of the price. Also apple do a pretty hefty student discount. You can get around 15% off a mac book and all you have to do is take some one with you that is a student. It doesn't matter if the laptop is not for them. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment63http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment63Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:10:08 GMTI'm currently engaged in this search myself, the main feature I've been struggling with has been the screen resolution. There are a lot out there with 768 or 800 lines which just isn't enough for a dev machine IMO. I've been looking for at least a res of 1440x900 and preferably 1920x1080. Two possibles I've found so far have been Dell Studio 15 (not the XPS one) which has an option of a 1080 line screen and good processor and memory for a decent price. Also the Sony Vaio E series which has a higher res screen option. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment62http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment62Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:42:51 GMTWhatever you take, a SSD is a must-have I am happy with my 14 months old DELL Latitude E4300 with a 128GB SSD except with the battery lifetime which is around 4hours (I used to be use to to 8 hours on my previous Dell XPS) but then I bought 2 batteries. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment61http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment61Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:13:43 GMTGo for the MBP, and as someone here already said, maybe wait till the new ones are out, as the new MBP's will be really mean machines. As developers, we need the best stuff out there. We already loose too much time waiting for compiling to be finished, deploying, memory swapping, disk access.. (btw, take a 7200rpm disk!) and so on. Believe me, they're just worth the 'mac tax' every single day. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment60http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment60Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:46:39 GMTJust for alternative, i would NOT recommend my laptop (Dell Latitude E6400). It just sucks. The material used is just like a fat magnet, everything from your fingers get stuck in a very visible manner, graphics is average at best, hard drive has shown symptoms of quickly dying (replaced it already once) all because the sucker gets way too hot. I mean dock port gets burning hot, everything else inconveniently hot. And it's addition to all this very very noisy. What I've seen, same applies to all more "powerful" Latitude E series. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment59http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment59Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:44:49 GMT> everyone has suggested to buy what they have Well, then let me add what I wouldn't suggest, and that's HP, especially Paviliion. Couple of years ago me and my collegues bought a few different models, and they all broke due to a manufacturing error (video card overheating) that HP denied to confirm (there's a whole site devoted to this - hplies.com). I second Toshiba if you need durability and quality. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment58http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment58Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:19:20 GMTI'd also suggest a Lenovo Thinkpad. W500 is the best. I own an R500, it is larger and heavier, but cheaper. Excellent driver support. Very sturdy. High quality screen, keyboard and pointing device. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment57http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment57Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:58:42 GMTI recently got the Dell Studio XPS 16 with i7 820, 8GB of ram, and a SSD and its super fast, a solid machine, and am very happy with it. SSD is key for doing development with VS on a laptop. With Win 7 it literally does a cold start up in about 20 seconds for me after you blow away all the crapware and repave it with a fresh OS install. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment56http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment56Fri, 12 Feb 2010 06:01:12 GMTI use a Dell Precision M4400 with 8GB ram and a 250GB OCZ SSD. Boots win 7 x64 in less than a minute and performs well with pretty much everything. Visual Studio runs great, SQL Server is there in the background and stability has been second to none. It gets about 3 hours out of the 9 Cell battery which isnt too bulky but if you're away from sockets, the battery slice is a useful addition which gets you about 9 hours in total. Full work day on one charge off a powerhouse. It can get hot, and its not the smallest thing ever, but its portable unlike the M6500. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment55http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment55Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:52:37 GMTLenovo Thinkpad ftw. My current W500 model is great, i upgraded from a T60P: 2.8GHz core 2 duo T9600 4 gigs ram 60 gig solid state drive 1 gig vid, 1920x1200 res picked up mine at the lenovo outlet store for 1200 bucks http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment54http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment54Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:23:47 GMTBootcamp your mbp - as mentioned drop in some more ram and a 7200 http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment53http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment53Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:08:14 GMTBuy a used MBP. Definitely MBFTB. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment52http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment52Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:45:42 GMTalso mbp gives you opportunity to play with other platforms. i am considering moving away from .net platform. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment51http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment51Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:31:20 GMTof course go with apple macbook pro! http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment50http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment50Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:30:04 GMTForgot to mention the brand :P It's an Asus, and yes it has multitouch touchpad gestures ala mac http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment49http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment49Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:45:29 GMTI can't be happier with my G73JH-A1. For the price ($1600) it's a steal. Their lowest spec: Core i7, 8GB RAM, 1TB 7200rpm hdd raid, 1GB directx11 ATI 5870, 17.3" 1080p LED. You can adjust the spec to 16gb ram, i7-920m, and an SSD. It's a beast. She's got a "twin-turbo" button to operate its CPU and GPU on overclocked mode. Its cooling system is amazing you can barely feel any heat on your arm rest, and can be used on your lap without grilling your legs. Not to mention its terrific warranty terms. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment48http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment48Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:37:40 GMTI own (and recommend) a Dell Precision too (M6400). When you config your HDD's in Raid-0 (sata or even better: SSD) it really is a power development notebook. http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment47http://ayende.com/4396/suggestions-for-a-new-laptop#comment47Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:26:34 GMT