DEV Community

Jesse M. Holmes
Jesse M. Holmes

Posted on

Work machines for the new year

Good morning!

When I left the Army, I left behind a screaming machine, Dell's Precision 5520 configured to the tune of about $2,500. Now I'm getting set to purchase 10 machines for our team, and I wanted the community's opinion. Let's call it your birthday gift to me. 😉

I really love my UHD display, and virtualization is a requirement. We aren't mining bitcoin at work or developing games, but most of us will prefer to run a couple of external displays (mixed HiDPI and standard). We'll all be running Windows 10, and that is for a separate discussion. I've not been given a price point, but I'm assuming $2,500 is on the high end.

What are you using?

Latest comments (8)

Collapse
 
wuz profile image
Conlin Durbin

I use a Macbook right now, but I don't love it. I bought an upgraded old Thinkpad x230 a few months ago and used to use it for work, until I switched jobs. We just got our environment to a place that I can run it on Arch Linux, so I am probably gonna switch back to that machine.

The repairability/ruggedness of the machine are awesome.

Collapse
 
kspeakman profile image
Kasey Speakman • Edited

I'm also a fan of Thinkpads when people ask for laptop suggestions. They have a great reputation (fun fact: there are 100 Thinkpads on the International Space Station), and I have good experience with them from when I was an IT technician. But I think the visual design of them has not changed significantly for over a decade. I would use one without reservation.

Collapse
 
rhymes profile image
rhymes

We'll all be running Windows 10, and that is for a separate discussion

Can't wait for this article about using Windows 10 day by day as a developer :-)

Collapse
 
kspeakman profile image
Kasey Speakman • Edited

Hmm, I use Windows 10 as a dev. Although I dev primarily on .NET so it seems pretty natural. For front-end stuff, I have Node and Git installed (for NPM, webpack, etc). I haven't had any problems that I recall, but I don't depend on a windows terminal for much aside from running node commands and an occasional git command. In full VS 2017, 90% of the git operations I need are part of the UI. And maybe 60% for VS Code.

I did install Ubuntu on Windows 10 to get a full linux environment. In recent updates of Windows 10 it and a few other distros are literally just apps on the Windows app store. (And this is the only app I have ever installed from there.)

Edit: I have also been a linux and mac user in the past, and I'm quite familiar with them. Windows just makes the most sense for my current work environment. Especially since we have Windows desktop apps to interface with hardware and other windows-based vendor software. It would be difficult to dev it from other platforms. Plus VS2017 is just a great IDE and is Windows-only.

Collapse
 
wolfhoundjesse profile image
Jesse M. Holmes

Ha! It's been an interesting transition. Did you see this?

There are STILL things I haven't taken care of, and a few annoyances along the way, but I've gotten the hang of everything I need.

Collapse
 
rhymes profile image
rhymes

Didn't see it before, read the post and the comments, thanks!

Collapse
 
itamarst profile image
Itamar Turner-Trauring

Lenovo Thinkpads (except maybe the really thin ones?) are designing to be maintainable. So e.g. switching out hard drive isn't an ordeal. They're well built in general.

Collapse
 
scottishross profile image
Ross Henderson

I was provided a Lenovo Thinkpad T460s for work. Literally have been able to do everything I've ever wanted on it and it's comfortable. With a display port adapter + hdmi cable I have two additional screens on it.