Right now, my Windows laptop is one of these 17" beasts. It's about 2000 pounds and generates enough heat to heat my house in the winter. It's pretty powerful, so it can actually run Eclipse without exploding, but it's just too massive.
My other laptop is an early-model Chrome OS laptop (I'm writing on it right now!), which is dual-booted with Linux. It has 2 GB of RAM, so it slows to a crawl when I try to run anything of note on it. Even the Web IDEs that I've tried are slow on it.
So I have a Goldilocks problem -- I need a laptop that is small and light enough to work on a couch (with preferably little heat) but powerful enough to run an IDE (preferably a free one). Would also be a nice bonus to be able to play some games.
Most people would instantly point me to a Macbook Air / Pro, which is fine, except they cost like fifteen hundred f'ing dollars for an entry-level version, probably closer to $2000 for something with some meat on the bones. I'd rather stab my eyes out with a stick than use a Windows 8 laptop, and others would say to just wipe it and install Windows 7, which sounds like yet another eight hours down the drain.
At this point, I can hope for dual-booting a beefier Chromebook, or shelling out a couple grand for a Macbook. Not sure what would be a better idea.
Glenn, I've been using Nitrous.IO for some web coding and it works pretty well. Not sure how the Web IDE will work on your Chromebook, but you can work via SSH as well. I'm quite happy with it - and it's nice to have my full dev environment go with me from machine to machine.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the daily writing - at least one person is reading them all!
Yeah, I've tried both Nitrous.io and CodeEnvy (and some other ones I forget). There's just something "not as responsive" with web IDEs, plus the weirdness of having your code in the hands of someone else. Maybe I should give them another shot on a machine with more horsepower. Pixel time ? :)
ReplyDeleteSo far its 8 posts, hopefully I can keep the momentum going. Hopefully I don't run out of topics to write about...
I'm with ya Glenn, finding a good development laptop is quite difficult. I mostly do light development at this point, and I've actually opted for the lowest end Macbook Pro Retina 13. Most people I know who do end up doing primary development on their laptop go for a larger 15 or 17 inch model though. Though for couch level development it might not be an issue. I agree completely on the Windows issue, and have a Chromebook Pixel, which has the power, but there's still the issue of IDE support. You could also go for a non-retina Macbook Pro 15 or something like that, or even the first gen Macbrook Pro 15 retina, I picked one up maybe a year ago for around 1300 and it was an amazing machine.
ReplyDeleteHmm, I'm not sure why Google is using that nickname instead of my Google Plus account, but this is Brian Newton. =)
ReplyDeleteHey Brian :) Yeah, I'm leaning more and more towards a lower-end Macbook or a Macbook air, just because the toolset is mature enough. have you tried any semi-serious games on the Pro 15?
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