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Discussion on: My beginner’s guide to choosing a laptop for programming

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igormp profile image
Igor Moura

The only part that I've found useful about this post was about RAM amount. 8gb is becoming barely enough with the oncoming JS-apps that love to suck that RAM.

Other than that, I couldn't get much useful info along all those lines. You didn't give any specific tips on which components should one look for, or even some laptops examples, and all of that without mentioning the most important thing: how much is one willing to spend.

You touch on the topic about desktops, but don't mention how much powerful one can be for the same money you'd pay for a laptop.

You forgot to mention how important a CPU is when you need to multi-task, and how laptop CPUs are pretty lame: even if you pay for a top-notch one, you won't get anything better than a quad-core CPU, something that's really common in desktops.

Storage is something really personal. Check your disk usage, try to clean some old, unnecessary stuff and check it again, that's usually how much you need (give or take a few spare GBs).

As far as graphics goes, that's only a matter if you work with CUDA or OpenCL related stuff, or if you plan on going the game dev route, as you said (but what does this have to do with programming anyway?). Although a desktop would be preferred in both cases, otherwise your workflow would be hindered heavily.

I don't think there is much to say about battery life, go for as much as you can, since a laptop is meant to be portable and you wouldn't want to look for a power outlet every 2 hours.

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rupertsmithers profile image
Rupert Smithers • Edited

Igor, I didn't provide any concrete examples because I did not want to promote stuff (anyway, I am rather partial, what I prefer might not suit other professionals). What I wanted is to give some key points of what you should look for in a laptop and range these points by their importance.
As for desktops and their price/capacity ratio, there is a comparison laid out in the table available by the link (I did not want to go further into the topic since my post is about laptops).
I am sorry if this piece disappointed you and did not give you any new information. But as it says in the title, it is a beginner's guide, while you clearly have already seen some stuff ) Anyway, thanks for the feedback, I'll keep all that in mind working on the future posts.