Laptop for Programming

Arthien

I'm hoping to get some laptop advice from the experts if I may.

My husband is a computer programmer by trade, and he wants a laptop so he can work on his new business project in his spare time (on his lunchbreak at work, or at home in front of the tv). He has a decent PC for the more complicated stuff, so the laptop wouldn't need to be all-singing, all-dancing and cost 4 figures, but I know he'd want more than a basic model.

I'm thinking of getting him one as a Christmas present, so any advice would be gratefully received as it's not exactly my area...

He's mentioned previously that he'd want at least 8gb of RAM, if not 16gb, and I've seen some with 4gb and the option to add more but I'm not sure how difficult or expensive that might be. He would need a decent amount of memory and a relatively quick processor. I've had a look and Pentium might be good enough, but if I could get better without spending too much more then I would do that.

Is this shopping list possible for under £350?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions

AndyPix

Hi, im not sure of pricing and things, but as a programmer myself I can say that the screen size is quite important.

I may need to have many things open at the same time and be constantly referring between them and as such , screen real-estate is crucial ..

Im sure someone else will be along to advise of components and prices etc in due course.

Hope this helps
Andy

pmartin86

If he is a programmer he probably has a fairly solid idea of what he wants and its very unlikly you will be able to find exactly it. I work in IT myself and my wife would never dream of buying me a laptop/PC because she knows how fussy I am over the smaller details that most users would just ignore.

I suggest a gift voucher or a chat with him and let him pick one.

poppellerant

From what you've said so far, it sounds as though anything less than an i5 will be no good - so that's the Pentium out the race for start.

[Deleted User]

if this is for "work purposes" then you may find it may be more tax efficient if he buys it for work?

I work in IT, i've got an i7 HP, with 16gb of RAM and a 500gb SSD hard disk... would I let my wife pick me a new one? Sorry, nope.

Lovely idea though, but really best working with him to figure out what to get. Maybe look at the dell reconditioned machines? http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/SecondaryInventorySearch.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=dfh&cs=ukdfh1&puid=49c9868a

victor2

As others have said, nice idea but it won't work. Tell him you want him to get a new laptop for himself and you'll contribute up to £350 for it. He will know what will meet his needs and how to get a good deal. If he wants to add a bit himself he will.
Loses the surprise element, but he'll be much happier!

Arthien

Thanks for the comments everyone.

Regarding screen size, he actually said around 13-15 inches would be best, as he wants lightweight and easily portable. He's got the PC for dual-screening. This is really just for doing a bit of coding here and there, ie in the car on his lunch break (this is a side project of his own that he's just beginning to get off the ground, nothing to do with his day job so unfortunately the suggestion of claiming it as a business expense won't work yet).

It also saves him being sat on the pc in our cold office room on his own all evening!

I appreciate what you're saying about not letting someone else pick, that was my primary concern really, but it would have been nice if it had worked. If nothing else it would be good to know where to start looking, as I don't feel like PC World would really be very MSE!

WobblyDog

I do a fair amount of programming, and I reckon that less than 8GB of RAM is risking poor performance. On the other hand, I find that an i3 processor is quite powerful enough for my development work.

onomatopoeia99

My development machine is a core 2 duo from about 7 years ago with 3GB of RAM. Apart from when running a build, most of the time I'm in a text editor, which is amongst the least demanding things that you can do with a computer.

Processing power isn't everything and I would normally advise that screen real estate is, but you seem to have covered that already. Of course if he's using some fancy IDE for development which imposes its own overhead then CPU and RAM would be more important.

One big thing that hasn't been considered yet is keyboard quality. That can't be understated. I use an IBM Model M on my desktop and really dislike using my laptop with its terrible tactile feedback.

Arthien

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

My development machine is a core 2 duo from about 7 years ago with 3GB of RAM. Apart from when running a build, most of the time I'm in a text editor, which is amongst the least demanding things that you can do with a computer.

Processing power isn't everything and I would normally advise that screen real estate is, but you seem to have covered that already. Of course if he's using some fancy IDE for development which imposes its own overhead then CPU and RAM would be more important.

One big thing that hasn't been considered yet is keyboard quality. That can't be understated. I use an IBM Model M on my desktop and really dislike using my laptop with its terrible tactile feedback.

He uses netbeans as far as I'm aware, if that makes any difference? It's interesting that you've mentioned keyboard quality though, as even I've noticed that some keyboards feel cheap, or are too bendy and don't feel sturdy at all, so I can't imagine they'd feel pleasant to use. I assumed it was in part because of everyone using the sample models in-store, but I've never seen a rating of keyboard sturdiness or anything that would help me to avoid something like that!

Out of interest, does brand really matter? Is it what's inside that's important or could the same spec from two different brands be totally different beasts?

Arthien

WobblyDog wrote: »

I do a fair amount of programming, and I reckon that less than 8GB of RAM is risking poor performance. On the other hand, I find that an i3 processor is quite powerful enough for my development work.

Thanks for this, I'll bear it in mind. Even if my husband does end up picking his own it would be nice for me to be able to know roughly what might suit so I can help him find a bargain.