What kind of setup would you prefer if you could do it all over again today.
- Mac or Windows, Desktop or Laptop?
- Would you use the same setup for work vs home?
- How would you handle gaming? Would you have a separate rig for that?
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Top comments (53)
Kind Sir or Madam,
Why limit yourself to Windows or Macs? Ubuntu, Mint, RedHat or CentOS, to name a few, are very good to excellent.
I know many love Macs but I can't stand their repair tactics. Windows will not even allow you to swap out a hard drive with having to buy the OS twice! Why should software negate you from changing out your own equipment? You bought it but you can't open it!
After of years playing with computers, every one should be willing and able to fix/upgrade their own. Heck, the only reason I might go to repair shops is not bc I can't do it but I don't have the time.
Now the actual hardware, Dell XPS 13 or 15, Asus or Lenovo laptops suit me.
I'm sorry but that is not true. Windows 10 actually registers itself to the motherboard of the machine you install it on so you can easily swap out the hard drive on it. In fact, i do this often as I build PCs when I am not developing.
Good to know. Maybe I have come across unscrupulous sales ppl.
I have used linux machines for quite some time and do not deal with Windows anymore.
I second this. I've replaced a hard drive and a motherboard on my pc and did not need to repurchase a license in either case. (Ymmv)
Generally if more than x (pretty sure x is 4 or 5) pieces of HW change all at once, it considers it a different system. You can deactivate your license and reapply to the new computer in this scenario.
That sucks you have had to deal with that. Windows has activated surprisingly painlessly when I have done major hardware changes and I don't recall ever having to pay again to do it.
That being said, it is always a good idea to look all the options for operating systems and when doing so, weighing all the pros and cons for your use case. For many, not only would a Linux-based system be able to do the job, it probably is the better tool for the job.
James,
I was in a Staple's recently and looking over the laptops when the sales person stopped by. I mentioned that I usually like swapping out HD's. When the sales person told me about this nifty "feature" requiring a second purchase of Windows, IF I were to upgrade their laptops.
I was amazed too!
Wow... that seems a bit like a dodgy salesman, or at least an incompetent one. š
I bought a laptop a few years back and swapped the mechanical drive for an SSD. I cloned the drive and besides working faster, I had no issues whatsoever.
Your underlying point from your original comment still is good though - don't limit yourself to Windows and Mac. š
Personally I think it comes down to one thing, and it's something that people don't talk about.
You pick the setup that enables you to easily jump in and get shit done. We can argue all day about cost-to-specs of Macs and how it's gotten progressively worse over the years, but it's still the best device to let you jump right in to your workflow and actually get developing today. Everything boots up incredibly fast and it's got the most intuitive and minimal interface to give your mind room to be pragmatic and efficient.
What about Windows? You lose some of that intuitive UI and it's a little more convoluted and clunky, but for any discipline of coding that requires compiling and rendering, you want that power. But in that case, Windows doesn't have a competitor; you need one for this kind of heavy-duty programming. Either that, or Linux.
Given that this is a website for programmers and developers, we should put gaming as far down the list of priorities as possible. If you want an all-in-one that can dev, game, watch movies and help you raise your newborn, then you're going to have to accept that whatever rig you buy/build, will definitely be overkill for what you need to code stuff.
I believe a good Windows laptop with a decent screen/ram/processor is the best of all worlds. It doesn't do anything the best, but it does well at everything enough. For that reason, I bought the Dell XPS 15 2018 for around Ā£1800 on Black Friday and it's been a great all-rounder.
I would like to make some points in your comment.
Do you really think that "jump right in to your workflow" is that important? I may be being a little naive, but unless my laptop break in the middle of the week by the morning and the difference in price is less than a day of my work, I prefer to customise everything and lose some time to win productivity on the long term.
Same thing about the "intuitive interface". I don't care about some learning curve that will benefit me latter.
If I make an app for the normal users like my mom, these are some points I will definitely take into consideration. But as a developer, I am always searching and learning new things to make me do more for less.
I'm quite happy with my thinkpad carbon x1 dual booting Linux (I basically never use Windows at this point, but it's on there still). The latest Dell XPS 13 looks nice as well.
All that being said, in some ways I wish I'd gone with a Mac even though at the time I justified the thinkpad as a better investment (better hardware for the same price or a little less depending on config), I think having a single, widely used OS that's Unix based would have made my life simpler at least at the beginning of my learning journey. As a plus, I'm very glad I sort of forced myself to learn Linux, and it's a great laptop.
No windows os was hurt during the creation of this comment.
I've owned a variety of computers over the years, but I definitely lean towards System76, especially their laptops. Retrospectively, I wish I'd found out about them years ago.
If I could find where I'd parked my TARDIS, I'd also go back to my early days coding, and tell myself to install and learn Linux immediately. Windows 10 has made some significant improvements to their ecosystem (especially Clang support and WSL), but Windows 7 and 8 are not respectable development environments. I've come to regret my early foray into .NET 2010.
I 've always wanted to make the leap to System76 but I'm a highly mobile developer (coding in airports..) and I was never able to find a good review regarding the battery life of their laptops? Any feedback to offer?
For what it's worth, I have a ten hour battery...and this is an older model I refurbished. (The battery is original, as far as I know.)
I would go for thin gaming laptops, windows subsystem for Linux has solved most of my problems with windows and you can game whenever you want ;) I have two windows user accounts - workhard and gameinsane.. Works for me
I use a Macbook Pro and a Windows machine with Subsystem Linux and both of them work just fine for me so it is just a matter of preference I would say.
I like Linux distros but I need to reliably run software that is not available for them at this point in time. i.e If you do design and other media work you might not want to use it as your main system.
Hope this helps!
I have a MacBook Pro for work and a Dell XPS13 at home. The lack of Sketch support is my main drawback for switching to Windows permanently. The hardware on the Mac is, imho, subpar. I've only had it since July and the keyboard is intermittently failing on frequently used keys š£
I hear you, Sketch is great but I have stopped using it as solid cross-platform alternatives are starting to get of the ground.
Sorry to hear about your Macbook, seems to be a common issue on models with the butterfly keyboard, I have a 2015 and had no issues as of yet. (fingers crossed)
Heard good things about the XPS series and the Razer machines but it seems like we cannot win with laptops at the end of the day. š
Really interesting video on defects, thanks š
I'd read about the butterfly keyboard issues, just need to bother our IT department for a repair but I'm dead lazy!
Taught myself to use the other CMD key instead, haha!
Appreciate you mentioning the caveat with Linux and design š It's probably the major thing holding me back, the lack of first party support for design software (Adobe, Sketch, etc).
Definitely get a Linux distro and separate gaming from work. Dev tools often don't work (well) on Windows and gaming on Linux is a joke.
Hardware depends on workload.
Just coding is going to require fuck all, we've been able to do simple text editing for quite a while now. Good peripherals (monitor, keyboard) and a fast, but not necessarily large, drive (SSD) seem like the biggest issues.
If you're working on VR/AR, AI, HPC or similar you might want to cram as many GPUs in there as you can afford.
If you've got more advanced deployments, various containers running, complex environments etc. I'd say CPU and RAM are important aspects.
For my laptop, I picked the largest screen I could find, crammed an i7 in there with as much RAM as I could afford and a small SSD. Running Linux Mint.
Depends on whether you need to travel with it or not. If you are going to use it from home, get a desktop. It can offer unrivaled performance and get something like:
And a good monitor as very important as well, get some ultra wide monitor, it helps to better concentrate as compared to two smaller monitors.
If you need a laptop, this is way better than mac: razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-bla...
I appreciate the specs and laptop recommendation. It's been hard to decide on what minimum PC specs are performant nowadays. Ended up using this website to get an idea of what's a "slow" vs "ridiculous" PC.
And thanks for the laptop rec! I've been trying to find a solid Windows alternative to the Macbook that isn't too low-end. Razer seems like it's a great choice š
I built a machine similar to this recently. For starting from the ground up (no reused parts), I have a Ryzen 7 2700X, 32GB DDR-4 (with option to go 64 in future), 2 Samsung 970 Elite 512GB NVMe drives and a Radeon RX570 for around 1200. When my MBP dies, I am going to buy either a bottom-spec Mac or generic Windows laptop and set up a VPN to my network environment which would allow me to RDP into my desktop for real work.
13 Macbook pro with 16gb ram, perfect portability, 15 is too bulky.
Ultrawide monitor to dock at work and home!
A dedicated gaming pc connected at home to the same monitor because gaming on mac is a joke.
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