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#off-topic
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2021-01-23
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Eamonn Sullivan20:01:57

Hi everyone, since I can't go anywhere or spend much, I have a little money collected. I want to buy my next 3-5 year laptop. I'm currently using Ubuntu 20.04 on a Thinkpad X260 (core i5, 2.4Ghz, 2 real cores, four hyperthreads, plus 16GB RAM and an 256 SSD) and an external monitor. I'm a full time, (now remote) full-stack developer (React on the front end, Scala on the back, and lots of elicit Clojure on the side). I've never felt particularly constrained when working alone on this laptop, but Zoom eats one of my cores and I'm starting to feel the ceiling when pair programming or demoing. I'm in the U.K. What would people recommend? I'm thinking i7, 8-core, and maybe 32GB Ram, 500GB SSD. Does that sound reasonable? Anything else?

vemv23:01:24

in the UK with all its all fintech tradition there's a really cool aftermarket of used macs, (non-apple) servers etc I got my mac pro from there and am thinking of getting a server also (I live in bcn) I'd try hard to get 6 or 8 cores at least. clj being clj , arbitrarily many tools can be benefit from that

Eamonn Sullivan16:01:15

Thanks, everyone. In the end, I'm going to go with https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Notebooks/10-14-inch/TUXEDO-InfinityBook-Pro-14-v5.tuxedo -- A Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 v5. It has the combination of portability, battery life, support for 64GB of Ram, four real cores (double what I have now) and the ports I want. It doesn't have gamer graphics, but I'm not a gamer (and at 58, am unlikely to become one now). It came down to a refurbed Dell Latitude 14, a System76 Gazelle and this one. I tried hard for a ThinkPad, but Lenovos have very few models that you can customise when ordering and I couldn't be 100% sure (absent a Linux option) whether it would be difficult to set up on Ubuntu. (It probably wouldn't, but it was still an unknown in comparison to the ships-with-Linux alternatives.)

Eamonn Sullivan16:01:19

Oh, and I couldn't find any AMD ones, either. All out of stock.

timo09:01:55

tuxedo is quite nice, they provide a good repairability as well :thumbsup:

timo09:01:11

I am using one myself

noisesmith20:01:29

not use zoom? (if only it were an option...)

Eamonn Sullivan20:01:16

yeah, exactly. But, no.

Mno20:01:58

Lots of different i7s nowadays.. The options really confuse me. But I don't think that a laptop with any of the current gen ones will have any issues for a good while. I've been looking to try ryzen this time around.

dpsutton20:01:02

I wouldn’t get 16gb of ram. 32 minimum

Eamonn Sullivan20:01:25

Would 64gb be advisable? I don't expect the wife to tolerate this again for at least three years...

borkdude20:01:07

I would get 64gb if the laptop configuration allowed for it

Eamonn Sullivan20:01:19

Any brand/model recommendations? I'm looking at System76, Dell, Entroware, Juno Computers...

blak3mill3r01:01:18

I've had good luck with http://www.m-techlaptops.com in the past. Very good prices for high-end hardware.

Eamonn Sullivan20:01:46

I do like the eraser/rubber on thinkpads...

Conor21:01:55

I bought a Thinkpad L14 (the model with a Ryzen 4750u) and put 64Gb RAM in it, it works pretty well

Conor21:01:55

AMD laptops are a bit thin on the ground at the moment but you could try https://slimbook.es/en/store/

Conor21:01:10

I would definitely recommend an AMD processor over Intel, the performance at 15W TDP is better than Intel at 45W

dpsutton21:01:24

i would do a thinkpad. the system76s don't have nice screens and thinkpads are built well, have great keyboards, and work well with linux

👍 6
Eamonn Sullivan09:01:56

I'm getting put off by Lenovo's terrible web site and very limited customisation options. After some hours of looking, I've not seen them offer more than 16GB of RAM, for example.

Eamonn Sullivan10:01:40

Ah, just found one with 32...

Mno21:01:32

Extra ram with scala projects is a strong recommendation, at least in the projects I worked on (with 40 tabs open) 32gb was getting to worrying memory pressures

Mno21:01:13

But that was also running with a few docker containers running at the same time.. So kinda extreme