Currently, I am using an Intel i3- 3rd generation laptop with 4Gb of Ram. Now I am willing to purchase a new laptop for programming purpose (Machine Learning and application development).
I have seen many laptops on the internet with the good configuration in a different price range. But I find this Apple MacBook Pro MLH32HN/A Laptop 2016 the best laptop in range.
But then my elder brother suggested me to buy this Dell Inspiron 15 7000 7567 because it has better configuration then Macbook pro and price is also less.
Now my question is which laptop should I buy, considering that I don't play computer games and will use the laptop only for programming purpose.
Oldest comments (29)
programming isn't very resource intensive (we are just editing text after all) but running your code is an entirely different story. I don't know a ton about ML but I think the more RAM the better, but don't quote me on that haha. On your other point, what kind of application development do you think you'll be doing the most?
I am mainly into server-side APIs, command line tools, web application (Java, Python) and mainly need a laptop for open source contribution.
I would listen to your brother, unless you absolutely need macOS
why would I buy that dell laptop considering that its battery life is too low compared to the mac, heavy machine (2.8kg), I don't play games so useless 4gb graphics card!
Sorry my bad, I didn't check the specs, I thought it was equivalent :D
Can you add more RAM and/or swap the hard drive for a SSD? If your computer is physically in good shape--keyboard, display and hinges--it might be worth your while to squeeze a bit more life from your current hardware...not to mention that it's cheaper than buying a whole new computer.
For example, I'm running a 6 year old Lenovo Thinkpad T520 that started it's life with 4 Gig RAM and a 320 Gig 7200rpm hard drive. Its second-generation i5-2520m processor still has plenty of oomph for an IDE, office suite, LAMP-stack and virtual machines (VirtualBox, Vagrant). Rather than buy a new machine, over the years, I've maxxed out the RAM to 16 Gig, traded the hard drive for a SSD, and most recently added an M2 SSD (so the OS lives there, and my data is on the SSD).
I've been contemplating buying a new machine for the past year, and just can't bring myself to do so when there's technically nothing wrong with mine. :)
Not willing to update my old machine, thanks for the suggestion. :)
I got what you are saying. but since I mainly work on open source and web application they are all deployed on cloud and user can access them via a web browser, so there is no need for the user to have a good laptop. I hope you got what I am trying to say. Thanks!
Alternatively, it's hard to go wrong with a Lenovo Thinkpad from the T or X series--Built to last.
Agreed! :)
you are right, thanks :)
Well, you can save even more by buying a magnetic needle and flipping bits one by one - you don't need all that fancy crap like RAM or SSD at all!
Well, i am using MacBook Pro myself for programming, but i only do frontend and light iOS app development, so i never run short on resources (even though Xcode sometimes may be hungry!).
You said that machine learning will be your primary direction. As far as i know, it is pretty hungry for CPU and GPU, so in that case buying Mac solely for that won't justify the price. For something as heavy as ML people usually build powerful PCs or rent servers.
But these are your money, i think you should buy the one you like for whatever reason. Going for Mac is a good option.
I have a Mid 2012 MBP with 16 GB of RAM and a SSD and it's still not time to think about a change :D
@amarlearning , Arden just reminded me of this post "The best laptop ever made" marco.org/2017/11/14/best-laptop-ever
:-)
Of course the kind programming you seem to do doesn't use a lot of resources from your laptop, but getting one with good components(at least a quad core cpu, 8GB of Ram, a discrete GPU) would be a nice choice, considering future-proofing. I'd recommend you to consider this one: amazon.com/VivoBook-i7-8550U-Proce... <-- I would avoid the other 15.6" model because it has a worse looking screen
Probably you wouldn't need a 17.3" screen laptop, but once I got one, i never looked back. This model has an almost all-metal construction, a great latest gen 4 cores/8 threads CPU, 16 GB of RAM which is plenty, a GTX 1050 as a nice addition, a good IPS 1080p screen ,backlit keyboard, and other features. It's only "downside" is that you won't get a long battery life (~ 5 to 6 hours of use).
If battery life is something you can't neglect, you can check out these other models(if you're considering to buy a 2k+$ laptop, maybe price won't be an issue for you):
Remember: Nice laptops like these would last you for a lot of years (even if some of these are branded as "gaming laptops")
amazon.com/UX550VE-DB71T-15-6-inch...
gearbest.com/laptops/pp_786412.htm...
amazon.com/MSI-GS63-STEALTH-060-i7...
And of course:
amazon.com/dp/B06XTCJT17/ref=twist...