What laptop for software development?

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What laptop for software development?

15 posts & 11 voices | Started 4 months ago by jimmers | Latest reply from rusty90

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jimmers - Member

I need to order a new laptop for work. Software developer by trade (I know breaking news - STWer involved in IT).

Got an ageing Dell Latitude D620 with 1440 x 900 screen. I commute by bike so I wish to keep the weight to around 2kg and something like a 14" screen.

Vertical screen res is important, don't want to go below 900px in height. All the new laptops are HD in aspect ratio which is rubbish for coding with 1366x768 being typical.

Budget around £700 - £950. Any recommendations?

EDIT: Must be Windows, not a Mac (development stuff dictates this).

Posted 4 months ago #
whatnobeer - Member

Cheaper laptop with an external monitor that you can swivel around so its vertical an option? Other than that, coding shouldnt need too much resource wise (although some IDE can be a bit of a hog sometimes). Cant recommend anything specific, but i'd just get one that you reckon will be reliable and one from a company with good after sales support should you/the company need it.

Posted 4 months ago #
jimmers - Member

Aye have thought of the monitor idea but I sometimes work from home and I don't have a monitor at home.

Posted 4 months ago #
b r - Member

Cheaper laptop and buy a monitor for home?

Posted 4 months ago #
cranberry - Member

There seem to be some silly good deals on Thinkpads at the moment - perhaps one with an uprated screen would do you ?

Posted 4 months ago #
xiphon - Member

Buy a 24" monitor (to turn 90'), nice mouse and keyboard.

I prefer my monitors 90' anyway - I have 3 24s together, which make a lovely wide and high desktop.

Posted 4 months ago #
coffeeking - Member

Totally flummoxes me that a software eng doesn't know exactly what his demands are in a work tool, and asks a bike forum?!

Posted 4 months ago #
Flaperon - Member

Depending on how good your eyesight is, get something with a 1920x1080 display. Having two windows open side-by-side for development much easier!

Posted 4 months ago #
jimmers - Member

Totally flummoxes me that a software eng doesn't know exactly what his demands are in a work tool, and asks a bike forum?!

Chat forum to be pedantic...

What I want is a 14" laptop with a 1440 x 900 screen but you can't buy them anymore. They are all 1366 x 768. I work from home at time so would rather have a laptop with a larger screen res than a monitor. Though may have to go down this route as I don't want to lugging a 17" behemoth around on a bike.

Posted 4 months ago #
bazzer - Member

I have a dell studio 15 XPS its a i7 Quad core with 8GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive.

1920 x 1080 display its pretty light and small and pretty pokey.

I run a couple of virtual machines on it too and it flies along.
Depends on what sort of developing you do, I have worked on projects where a build takes 30 seconds and a where it takes over an hour so I guess how powerful a machine you need depends on exactly what you are doing.

Posted 4 months ago #
toby1 - Member

Does actual model/manufacturer matter? Essentially you want as many cores and as much memory as you can get for the budget ... i5/i7.

HP Elitebook here, but I'm not sure you can get many for the money you specified.

Posted 4 months ago #
jimmers - Member

Open mind regarding model manufacturer. I do a lot of DB development and the db sizes is many GB in size so an i5/i7 is preferable.

Posted 4 months ago #
DM52 - Member

you can still get 14" laptops with 1600 X 900 screens however they are no longer a standard configuration. If you were to go to the Dell site and look up the Latitude E6420 you can customise the build to include an HD+ screen which will give you the higher resolution. Problem is the Dell looks a bit 'Fisher Price' when compared to others.

Posted 4 months ago #
jimmers - Member

Thanks DM52 will have a look at that. Always thought Dell were good value though they aren't built like they used to be. But they are cheap for the money.

Posted 4 months ago #
rusty90 - Member

Our standard spec is a Dell with decent amount of RAM, plus docking station with external keyboard and one, or even two, good size external monitors.
I'd hate to spent any significant amount of time developing using a laptop screen and keyboard.

Posted 4 months ago #

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