I agree that all your points are far more important than whatever image is pre-loaded.
At the very least a laptop designed for developers ought to keep the Insert/Home/PageUp + Delete/End/PageDown cluster in the normal formation, like Thinkpads do.
We are typists before we are programmers, and software is something we do have control over. Dell should be fretting over the things we don't have the ability to change on a lark.
A Linux laptop should be a good laptop. But we should be aware that having Linux pre-installed does make a difference.
A) You'll either pay the Microsoft tax or have Linux pre-installed, possibly both depending how how deep MS' hooks are.
B) Having all the drivers work is important, especially modern laptops will often switch their peripheral chips without changing even model # so there.
On top of that, I will never consider switching away from my Macbook until the following things are true:
* battery will last several hours (macbook still at 4+ hrs on full charge and it is 1.5 yrs old)
* very good (open) acpi support - if I can't 100% trust closing and opening to just suspend and resume correctly, I won't use it for anything other than toy purposes. (and open because I will be using my own kernel, or at least my own install of a distro, so it needs to be supported or at least compilable for every kernel).
Thinkpad (T60) has a great keyboard, good feedback. I don't use the mousepad, I like the little red pointer thingy it has and has 1400x1050 resolution display. It also a mate display (not the glare type).
It is bulkier than other laptops and by now its processor is behind the latest i7 and i5's.
Also as soon as I got I installed Ubuntu on it. Ubuntu lets me re-map caps lock to a control for my emacs usage.
And most of all this machine has worked great for many years . It has traveled with me, has been banged up, dropped, had hot liquids spilled on it and it still works.
I went shopping a couple weeks ago for a MacBook Air to replace my 15" MBP as my primary development machine. (The endorsement a couple weeks before from Linus about the simplicity and silence of the Air sold me)
I picked it up at BestBuy and when I was there I glanced at their Ultrabooks display. They had 3. The Asus and Toshiba seemed complete crap. Flimsy. Trash.
The only one that seemed a plausible purchase was the Samsung. I wasn't a persuadable customer: I'm not going to switch my platform choice because of one credible alternative. But for those customers that are, I think it's fantastic that they at least have 1 credible windows 7 alternative to an Air.
(Not that it matters, but if you're interested, this MBP is a work-supplied machine and it's the first Mac I've ever used. My other PC is a sony vaio core 2 duo circa 2008 or so running Windows 7. I was very impressed with Windows 7 when it came out. But as an engineer it's only a credible option because I was running a Ubuntu VM. When I took my current job and had my choice of machine I finally took the plunge and I've loved it ever since. I still use Ubuntu VM's for sharing dev environments but having a fantastic terminal app and a clean experience is something I have no interest in giving up. Thus, i'm not a persuadable.)
How about taller and higher-resolution screens while we're at it? 16:9 "HD" is fine for movies, but not exactly optimal for development. Right now the portable computer with the highest screen resolution is the iPad. I'm using a Thinkpad T61 because it's the only laptop I know of with a 4:3 screen that can take 8gb of memory.
> Then shove a great processor, a mouse pad that's not accidentally click able while typing, and a high resolution screen.
Agreed, although I don't consider the processor all that important. I run out of ram way before I can exhaust the CPU capabilities in the current generation of "ultrabooks". I want a 13" macbook air or something of similar build quality with a higher res screen and 8-16GB of ram.
I'm trying to bring this to market, first in the form of Thinkpads, but possibly other models too (including our own in the future). If anyone's interested, please sign up here - http://giniji.com
I own a XPS15z but I was never able to put what is wrong with it so succinctly.
I absolutely don't get what's with the pre-installed software thing, I can do that myself. What I need is full-driver support and some basic information of what is known to work. I don't expect them to maintain a full Linux compatibility list, but just a simple list that says: With this specific kernel and this mainstream distro, those things don't work out of the box. You need one intern for about two days to do that. Throw in exact specs and I can figure out a lot of things for myself.
What you are describing sounds like my 5 year-old HP DV9000. The keyboard & track-pad were surprisingly of very high quality, very close to that of Apple's IMO.
Too bad though the hardware & chasis design of the product line was extremely shoddy & defective; if the notebook didn't fry itself so often it probably would've been noticed more.
I will trade in most of that for just a matte screen. I read code all day and I like my terminal black. Most laptops nowadays function as mirrors instead of laptops.
This is kind of sad. XPS 13 is not exactly good -- the display resolution is terrible, there's no ethernet port, and for ultrabook it is not very thin, feels real cheap in hands, and the keyboard is not very good. It's almost like someone tool everything bad from the ultrabook trend and nothing good from it.
And when people won't care because the hardware is not worth it (especially when it's not that much cheaper than MBA), it will be interpreted as "no one wants linux".
>Project Sputnik, a product of Dell’s new internal incubation fund, features not just full hardware support for Ubuntu on the XPS13, but a notion of “profiles” for developers
They could have stopped at "full hardware support for Ubuntu". Nobody cares about their crapware.
Just two weeks ago I bought an HP ProBook for a colleague for the sole reason of being Linux certified. It came with a Suse license but he's using it with Ubuntu.
The one Dell laptop I could have bought came with an Ubuntu version from 2010.
Agreed that I don't want/need their crapware. It'd be great if companies that make hardware had a clue what people wanted, but that's why Apple is going to be the biggest company in the world while IBM lays off seventy-some percent of their workforce, HP has 100 models of notebook that all do the same thing, and Lenovo forgets what made their older laptops so nice.
I know there is a lot more to a nice laptop than proper software integration. However, proper software integration goes a long way. I bought an XPS m1330 "N" with Linux pre-installed 4 years ago. I have had zero funky hardware/software dances with it through the many re-installs I have done. I don't relish the idea of replacing it.
So this is good news to me. I looked into recent Dell's and found that there is almost always something slightly "wrong" with them when you run Linux on them. Either weirdness in power management or the touchpad or some other random thing. Just being able to buy a computer and not have to worry if it is going to work with my OS is very nice. I have too much to do and don't want to spend a week futzing with drivers and other nonsense (I have done enough of that for a life time).
In the spirit of... well... "thinking differently" we might call it, I'll actually say I'm pretty happy with the Dells I've had. They're solid workhorses with relatively good value for the money I spent on them. Certainly, they are not glamorous or beautiful, but they work well, have good support, and have generally run Ubuntu pretty well.
That said, if someone came along and really did good Linux support, I'd probably switch.
I've been pretty happy with my Dell laptops, running Ubuntu.
But they lost me when they dropped WUXGA. That extra 200-pixel row may not matter to folks using their machine to watch movies, but it's missing developer real estate to me.
Actually, the things that we are asking for are not that difficult for a hardware vendor to implement. Besides, we usually tend to buy the higher end models rather than the entry level ones, so the profit margins are higher for each developer
What would you think about a contemporary GRiD Compass?
Emphasis on durability and ergonomy before slim-ness, providing :
- Stronger structural material for laptop frame
- Shock and torque absorbing bits around corners, and hinges
- Stronger hinges that you can manipulate carelessly
- Better ergonomics by balancing weight
- More space for internal addition (PCIe, USB3) for modders
- Ease of access to internal, repairability.
- Easier heat dissipation aiming for 35-50C min-max range with minimal fan speed.
Beside, add:
A true 8bit IPS LCD.
A thinkpad class keyboard.
A nice vintage black box that handle 25 years of hackery without a glitch.
The worst part for me is that the XPS13 only allows a MAXIMUM of 4GB of RAM. This is ridiculous for a dev box, especially when I want to run a VM or two.
The 4GB is (obv) the limit of the Macbook Air as well.
I agree, running a VM leaves you at the redline. Running 2? Good luck.
I do run with a single Ubutnu VM nearly 100% of the time, but I skimp on it and only allocate 384MB usually. Sometimes I'll bump it up depending on what I'm doing in it.
All that said, I do wish that I could have 8 GB in my Air. But, with the extremely fast SSD, it's not essential. I use this machine as my daily driver (for mostly web-based Python, PHP and Go development) and love it. It's honestly my favorite development machine ever. I've never enjoyed developing on-the-go more, and at home plugged into a Cinema display it's a real joy to use.
So their target audience is developers that are incapable of installing their own tools and that are cool with the cheap look and flimsy build quality of Dell laptops.
Unfortunately, that market actually exists, and nine out of ten times that lack of caring for quality is reflected in their work.
I'm surprised they think developers would be interested in this. Having worked with Dell in IT, you couldn't pay me to use anything they put their name on. Dell have a bad reputation in both hardware and peopleware, and it's well deserved.
I worked in a university's IT department for most of my undergraduate career and have nothing but good things to report about their business class laptops. Their low-end consumer grade laptops are, well, low-end. Most of the tales of disappointment I've heard from Dell are people who decided to scrape the bottom of the bargain bin and were disappointed when they got what they paid for.
The biggest possible upside to this project will be if Shuttleworth & Company get on board to support the XPS13 as a first class Ubuntu platform because of Sputnik.
And when I say first class, I don't mean "give it the Supported Platform stamp." I mean "respond to user reports of touchpad bugs" and "fix them."
This is actually a pretty great Idea. I wouldn't mind paying a support fee instead of the ridiculous Windows License fee that I have to pay every time I buy a laptop (only to erase and install Ubuntu the moment it arrives). If only Dell had the courage to stand up to Microsoft...
"Configuration as code". In other words, "configuration as plain text files". Another innovation that's actually been in *nix since forever.
As a result of this, I can turn any computer into a me-friendly machine in about an hour. Install my favorite Openbox-based distro (Crunchbang), copy over dotfiles I've already customized, and install every package from a list that's been exported from my main laptop.
This is kind of interesting for me. I'm trying to find for myself a proper Linux machine. Right now on Dell e6410, a bit regret that I bought it.
In my opinion nearest to the ideal developer machine on Linux is Lenovo X1 or X220.
Screen 13": is enough, even 12" is enough. If you are kind of developer who moves his behind from meeting to meeting or spends some time on plains or conferences. 13" (max) is your choice. You can buy really cheap big monitors and plug you machine, in every place where you work.
Processor and Memory: this is out of discussion i7 and 8GB ram. Memory is so cheep those days that giving developers less than 8GB is a sin.
HDD: SSD 128. This works for me. I have external drives, as a developer I don't keep movies, games, photos on my computer.
Graphic Card. I had a rule that if I'm using Linux I'm using Nvidia cards. This probably not true any more. I've heard from people that Intel Cards work well. But still, switching screens is done decently in NVIDIA drives.
Screen: for me Glare.
Battery: should follow at least MacBook Pro 13". which is 3-4h.
Price if this will be more than 1400 $ people will buy MacBookPro.
Ubuntu: I'm using Xubuntu. Unity still keeps me angry, and as smallest as possible number of installed programs. Because I'm developer it doesn't mean that I'm using Eclipse.
+1 to the NVIDIA requirement with Linux - when looking for a new Linux dev laptop, this was a must since I use an external monitor most of the time when docked - you can trust this will work 110% with NVIDIA - Intel GPU's have been a bit shaky with this in the past. But this might be better with newer Linux kernels/Xorg shipping with distros like Ubuntu 12.04.
In the end, I went for a speced up Thinkpad T420 with i7/NVIDIA/8GB - works really, really well.
I am actually surprised that the battery only lasts 3-4h on a mbp on linux. on the x220 i get around 6h with the 6cell battery, obviously depending on use.
Linux developers by and large don't care what distro or software comes preloaded. They intend to replace it with their favorite setup the moment they take the machine out of the box. What they want is a keyboard designed for productivity and hardware that is fully compatible with the Linux kernel. Some will only use free (libre) drivers. Some want a large touchpad, others just want a pointing stick, and others don't use a pointing device at all. Many want easy access to the inside of their computer. Then there are always the regular consumer issues like how pretty the machine is, does it have bluetooth, an optical drive, etc. All laptops have a tradeoff among portability (size and battery), performance (CPU, GPU, RAM, and display), and price (low is good). Most great laptops only excel in two of those categories. Different developers choose a different two.
[+] [-] ntkachov|14 years ago|reply
Then shove a great processor, a mouse pad that's not accidentally click able while typing, and a high resolution screen.
That's a developer laptop. Ill install my own software, Thank you very much.
[+] [-] simonsarris|14 years ago|reply
At the very least a laptop designed for developers ought to keep the Insert/Home/PageUp + Delete/End/PageDown cluster in the normal formation, like Thinkpads do.
We are typists before we are programmers, and software is something we do have control over. Dell should be fretting over the things we don't have the ability to change on a lark.
[+] [-] joe_the_user|14 years ago|reply
A) You'll either pay the Microsoft tax or have Linux pre-installed, possibly both depending how how deep MS' hooks are.
B) Having all the drivers work is important, especially modern laptops will often switch their peripheral chips without changing even model # so there.
[+] [-] sophacles|14 years ago|reply
* battery will last several hours (macbook still at 4+ hrs on full charge and it is 1.5 yrs old)
* very good (open) acpi support - if I can't 100% trust closing and opening to just suspend and resume correctly, I won't use it for anything other than toy purposes. (and open because I will be using my own kernel, or at least my own install of a distro, so it needs to be supported or at least compilable for every kernel).
[+] [-] rdtsc|14 years ago|reply
It is bulkier than other laptops and by now its processor is behind the latest i7 and i5's.
Also as soon as I got I installed Ubuntu on it. Ubuntu lets me re-map caps lock to a control for my emacs usage.
And most of all this machine has worked great for many years . It has traveled with me, has been banged up, dropped, had hot liquids spilled on it and it still works.
[+] [-] encoderer|14 years ago|reply
I picked it up at BestBuy and when I was there I glanced at their Ultrabooks display. They had 3. The Asus and Toshiba seemed complete crap. Flimsy. Trash.
The only one that seemed a plausible purchase was the Samsung. I wasn't a persuadable customer: I'm not going to switch my platform choice because of one credible alternative. But for those customers that are, I think it's fantastic that they at least have 1 credible windows 7 alternative to an Air.
(Not that it matters, but if you're interested, this MBP is a work-supplied machine and it's the first Mac I've ever used. My other PC is a sony vaio core 2 duo circa 2008 or so running Windows 7. I was very impressed with Windows 7 when it came out. But as an engineer it's only a credible option because I was running a Ubuntu VM. When I took my current job and had my choice of machine I finally took the plunge and I've loved it ever since. I still use Ubuntu VM's for sharing dev environments but having a fantastic terminal app and a clean experience is something I have no interest in giving up. Thus, i'm not a persuadable.)
[+] [-] Zak|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yungchin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbell|14 years ago|reply
Agreed, although I don't consider the processor all that important. I run out of ram way before I can exhaust the CPU capabilities in the current generation of "ultrabooks". I want a 13" macbook air or something of similar build quality with a higher res screen and 8-16GB of ram.
[+] [-] revorad|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmr_|14 years ago|reply
I absolutely don't get what's with the pre-installed software thing, I can do that myself. What I need is full-driver support and some basic information of what is known to work. I don't expect them to maintain a full Linux compatibility list, but just a simple list that says: With this specific kernel and this mainstream distro, those things don't work out of the box. You need one intern for about two days to do that. Throw in exact specs and I can figure out a lot of things for myself.
[+] [-] BadassFractal|14 years ago|reply
Realforce 87U keyboard
2x (yeah they do exist I think) 1920x1200 screens, perhaps with really high PPI like the new ones Apple is releasing soon.
No touchpad (I'm quite happy with plugging in a mouse), I'd rather use a nipple.
Light, lots of battery, no need for a fancy graphics card. Decent CPU, doesn't have to be extreme.
Tons of memory, 16gb at least, the more the better.
No software at all. I'll install my own distro.
[+] [-] jmsduran|14 years ago|reply
Too bad though the hardware & chasis design of the product line was extremely shoddy & defective; if the notebook didn't fry itself so often it probably would've been noticed more.
[+] [-] goatslacker|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tseabrooks|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glogla|14 years ago|reply
And when people won't care because the hardware is not worth it (especially when it's not that much cheaper than MBA), it will be interpreted as "no one wants linux".
[+] [-] diminish|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fierarul|14 years ago|reply
They could have stopped at "full hardware support for Ubuntu". Nobody cares about their crapware.
Just two weeks ago I bought an HP ProBook for a colleague for the sole reason of being Linux certified. It came with a Suse license but he's using it with Ubuntu.
The one Dell laptop I could have bought came with an Ubuntu version from 2010.
[+] [-] seanp2k2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Karunamon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eterps|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanp2k2|14 years ago|reply
Not getting rid of my Latitude D830 (14.1" 1920x1200) until I can get something with /more/ pixel density and vrez
[+] [-] seanp2k2|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] timtadh|14 years ago|reply
So this is good news to me. I looked into recent Dell's and found that there is almost always something slightly "wrong" with them when you run Linux on them. Either weirdness in power management or the touchpad or some other random thing. Just being able to buy a computer and not have to worry if it is going to work with my OS is very nice. I have too much to do and don't want to spend a week futzing with drivers and other nonsense (I have done enough of that for a life time).
[+] [-] davidw|14 years ago|reply
That said, if someone came along and really did good Linux support, I'd probably switch.
[+] [-] jamesbritt|14 years ago|reply
But they lost me when they dropped WUXGA. That extra 200-pixel row may not matter to folks using their machine to watch movies, but it's missing developer real estate to me.
[+] [-] dman|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pm90|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|14 years ago|reply
Emphasis on durability and ergonomy before slim-ness, providing :
Beside, add: A nice vintage black box that handle 25 years of hackery without a glitch.[+] [-] alasdair_young|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] encoderer|14 years ago|reply
I agree, running a VM leaves you at the redline. Running 2? Good luck.
I do run with a single Ubutnu VM nearly 100% of the time, but I skimp on it and only allocate 384MB usually. Sometimes I'll bump it up depending on what I'm doing in it.
All that said, I do wish that I could have 8 GB in my Air. But, with the extremely fast SSD, it's not essential. I use this machine as my daily driver (for mostly web-based Python, PHP and Go development) and love it. It's honestly my favorite development machine ever. I've never enjoyed developing on-the-go more, and at home plugged into a Cinema display it's a real joy to use.
[+] [-] jakeonthemove|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rickmb|14 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, that market actually exists, and nine out of ten times that lack of caring for quality is reflected in their work.
[+] [-] pkmays|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kuiper|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brandon|14 years ago|reply
And when I say first class, I don't mean "give it the Supported Platform stamp." I mean "respond to user reports of touchpad bugs" and "fix them."
[+] [-] pm90|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsm|14 years ago|reply
As a result of this, I can turn any computer into a me-friendly machine in about an hour. Install my favorite Openbox-based distro (Crunchbang), copy over dotfiles I've already customized, and install every package from a list that's been exported from my main laptop.
[+] [-] xando|14 years ago|reply
Screen 13": is enough, even 12" is enough. If you are kind of developer who moves his behind from meeting to meeting or spends some time on plains or conferences. 13" (max) is your choice. You can buy really cheap big monitors and plug you machine, in every place where you work.
Processor and Memory: this is out of discussion i7 and 8GB ram. Memory is so cheep those days that giving developers less than 8GB is a sin.
HDD: SSD 128. This works for me. I have external drives, as a developer I don't keep movies, games, photos on my computer.
Graphic Card. I had a rule that if I'm using Linux I'm using Nvidia cards. This probably not true any more. I've heard from people that Intel Cards work well. But still, switching screens is done decently in NVIDIA drives.
Screen: for me Glare.
Battery: should follow at least MacBook Pro 13". which is 3-4h.
Price if this will be more than 1400 $ people will buy MacBookPro.
Ubuntu: I'm using Xubuntu. Unity still keeps me angry, and as smallest as possible number of installed programs. Because I'm developer it doesn't mean that I'm using Eclipse.
[+] [-] magnetikonline|14 years ago|reply
In the end, I went for a speced up Thinkpad T420 with i7/NVIDIA/8GB - works really, really well.
[+] [-] replax|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zerostar07|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsrguru|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akmiller|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sgarrity|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brunoqc|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] libria|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] technomancy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiggy2011|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seclorum|14 years ago|reply