<story><title>Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?</title><text>Hi,&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m writing this on my late 2012 MacBook Pro. Time goes by and I know rather sooner than later I&amp;#x27;ll need to replace it with a new machine. In 2012 I paid around 1000$ for MacBook Pro + Samsung SSD (256GB) + 16GB RAM, I made modifications on my own.&lt;p&gt;I check notebookcheck from time to time. I read reviews, opinions about new laptops. The point is, I don&amp;#x27;t know if there is any machine that could be recommended in reasonable price. At work I&amp;#x27;m using some new MacBook Pro which (i5&amp;#x2F;16GB&amp;#x2F;128GB SSD) which is noticeably slower than my current machine.&lt;p&gt;Performance of the computer is quite important for me. I&amp;#x27;m an Android developer, compilation of a big project I&amp;#x27;m working on takes enormous amount of RAM and CPU nowadays (with new Android Studio it&amp;#x27;s even worse). From time to time I work on web projects, so handling several instances of docker shouldn&amp;#x27;t be a problem for a new machine. I prefer Linux over MacOs over Windows, so good support for Ubuntu&amp;#x2F;Fedora would be nice.&lt;p&gt;I checked some computers in details but most of them fail in one or more aspects:
- hinges - MacBook has superior hinges, if I pay more than 1000 - 1500$ I expect to have great hinges
- price
- performance
- Linux support&lt;p&gt;Price is quite important for me, I&amp;#x27;m from Eastern Europe. What computer would you recommend in, let&amp;#x27;s say, &amp;lt;2000$ ?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>CoffeeOnWrite</author><text>I’m on my 4th Thinkpad T-series - T520, T530, T450s, T460s - each one was a a winner. I ditched the T5XX series when they borked the keyboard layout by adding a numpad. Used to run Ubuntu, now I run Debian, stable or testing depending on point in release cycle at install time. I plan to take another look at Ubuntu now that they gave up on Unity. A coworker is happily on the T470s (first USB-C in the series). I always get 1920x1080 since my eyes are accustomed to it, but multiple coworkers are happy with 2560x1440. Used to get the Nvidia cards, now very happy with the integrated Intel graphics. In general, last year’s hardware requires almost zero messing with Linux to make everything work, whereas with the latest hardware, be prepared to solve a couple minor issues. Ubuntu’s font rendering or Infinality are both amazing and better than macOS or Win10 to my eyes.&lt;p&gt;I’m ridiculously excited to eventually upgrade to a T480s because it’s the first in the series to offer a quad-core CPU. They’re selling the quad-core with Intel graphics which is exactly what I want. I hope Lenovo did a good job with the thermal engineering...&lt;p&gt;Thanks to all the open source developers that deliver this totally rad experience on Linux, Debian, and Gnome &amp;lt;3</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>closeparen</author><text>Friendly reminder that Lenovo made a deliberate choice to ship malware payloads to its customers from the factory [0] by preinstalling an SSL MITM proxy configuration from an adware vendor. This is not some suspicious technology with legitimate uses like Intel Management Engine. This is not concerns about the second-order implications of your voluntary uploads to Facebook and Google. It&amp;#x27;s not even an agency with a real national-security mission overstepping its bounds. It&amp;#x27;s honest-to-goodness we&amp;#x27;re-going-to-fuck-you-because-we-can pwnage officially authorized at the highest levels of the company to make a few bucks. When you ask your Lenovo machine to browse the web, you&amp;#x27;re not seeing the web, you&amp;#x27;re seeing a version edited by Lenovo&amp;#x27;s advertising partners. Sure, anyone here can beat it, but where &lt;i&gt;else&lt;/i&gt; in the stack have they subverted your machine?&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re even slightly concerned about data privacy and user freedom, please do not be complicit in Lenovo&amp;#x27;s continued existence.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theverge.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;9&amp;#x2F;6&amp;#x2F;16261988&amp;#x2F;lenovo-adware-superfish-settlement-fine-state-ag&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theverge.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;9&amp;#x2F;6&amp;#x2F;16261988&amp;#x2F;lenovo-adware-sup...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?</title><text>Hi,&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m writing this on my late 2012 MacBook Pro. Time goes by and I know rather sooner than later I&amp;#x27;ll need to replace it with a new machine. In 2012 I paid around 1000$ for MacBook Pro + Samsung SSD (256GB) + 16GB RAM, I made modifications on my own.&lt;p&gt;I check notebookcheck from time to time. I read reviews, opinions about new laptops. The point is, I don&amp;#x27;t know if there is any machine that could be recommended in reasonable price. At work I&amp;#x27;m using some new MacBook Pro which (i5&amp;#x2F;16GB&amp;#x2F;128GB SSD) which is noticeably slower than my current machine.&lt;p&gt;Performance of the computer is quite important for me. I&amp;#x27;m an Android developer, compilation of a big project I&amp;#x27;m working on takes enormous amount of RAM and CPU nowadays (with new Android Studio it&amp;#x27;s even worse). From time to time I work on web projects, so handling several instances of docker shouldn&amp;#x27;t be a problem for a new machine. I prefer Linux over MacOs over Windows, so good support for Ubuntu&amp;#x2F;Fedora would be nice.&lt;p&gt;I checked some computers in details but most of them fail in one or more aspects:
- hinges - MacBook has superior hinges, if I pay more than 1000 - 1500$ I expect to have great hinges
- price
- performance
- Linux support&lt;p&gt;Price is quite important for me, I&amp;#x27;m from Eastern Europe. What computer would you recommend in, let&amp;#x27;s say, &amp;lt;2000$ ?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>CoffeeOnWrite</author><text>I’m on my 4th Thinkpad T-series - T520, T530, T450s, T460s - each one was a a winner. I ditched the T5XX series when they borked the keyboard layout by adding a numpad. Used to run Ubuntu, now I run Debian, stable or testing depending on point in release cycle at install time. I plan to take another look at Ubuntu now that they gave up on Unity. A coworker is happily on the T470s (first USB-C in the series). I always get 1920x1080 since my eyes are accustomed to it, but multiple coworkers are happy with 2560x1440. Used to get the Nvidia cards, now very happy with the integrated Intel graphics. In general, last year’s hardware requires almost zero messing with Linux to make everything work, whereas with the latest hardware, be prepared to solve a couple minor issues. Ubuntu’s font rendering or Infinality are both amazing and better than macOS or Win10 to my eyes.&lt;p&gt;I’m ridiculously excited to eventually upgrade to a T480s because it’s the first in the series to offer a quad-core CPU. They’re selling the quad-core with Intel graphics which is exactly what I want. I hope Lenovo did a good job with the thermal engineering...&lt;p&gt;Thanks to all the open source developers that deliver this totally rad experience on Linux, Debian, and Gnome &amp;lt;3</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>paride5745</author><text>This.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m on a ThinkPad t470s, amazing little machine, I love it more than my old MacBook Pro 2015.</text></comment>