January 2, 2016 at 1:34 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Surface Book
January 4, 2016 at 2:29 am
I suggest broadening your search and taking a close look at a loaded Apple Macbook Pro, as many developers have done. High quality hardware (though better to add your own RAM, which is easy and shaves several hundred from the Apple price of the RAM.)
You can run Windows as a VM in Parallels, which permits OS X to be used as well, but you can also make it boot directly to Windows.
January 4, 2016 at 3:05 am
I have a Surface and I love it.
January 4, 2016 at 4:49 am
I'm intrigued by the Surface Book, but the sleep bugs (Sleep!) in this first iteration worry me. I'd want to see it stable first and I suspect a v2 would probably have a lot of other minor but useful hardware improvements too.
The Lenovo X1 carbon will handle 16GB, maybe worth a look.
January 4, 2016 at 5:10 am
About 5 years ago, I too got tired of the Dell's, Lenovo's, etc that just didn't hold up to heavy use. I made the switch to a Macbook Pro and couldn't be happier. I just purchased my 3rd one (after the July refresh). 2-3 years is pretty good for a laptop, and they were still in great shape (sold on ebay for 50% of original cost too!).
I use OS X for most office related stuff. For my development work, I am currently using Parallels to run Win10, Win8.1 and Server 2012. It's been really solid. The current release of VMWare Fusion looks pretty good, I've been considering taking it for a test drive.
The Surface Book is interesting for sure. This reviewer claims MBP is twice as fast (https://fstoppers.com/gear/surface-book-vs-macbook-pro-15-macbook-twice-fast-93596).
January 4, 2016 at 5:50 am
It's so weird that your Toshiba is dead and mine is chugging along (knock wood).
Maybe you're just hard on machines. Ha!
(For those who don't know, I dropped a laptop a little over a year ago and had to replace it)
That said, I'd really like to hear the reports on that new Surface. It looks good. I got to type on one, once. It feels good. No word on if they last well or not.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
January 4, 2016 at 5:50 am
Went MacBook Pro in 2009 and never looked back. I also have never had the need for more than 8gb of ram. In addition to running Windows VMs I also use my laptop for design/graphics work.
I personally think that adding ram was much more impactful/necessary when solid state was less prominent. In have used my current MacBook with both 8gb and 16 gb configurations and I can definitively say that adding a solid state drive to my 2012 MacBook Pro was exponentially more effective than adding an additional 8 gb of memory.
January 4, 2016 at 5:52 am
Andy Warren (1/4/2016)
I'm intrigued by the Surface Book, but the sleep bugs (Sleep!) in this first iteration worry me. I'd want to see it stable first and I suspect a v2 would probably have a lot of other minor but useful hardware improvements too.The Lenovo X1 carbon will handle 16GB, maybe worth a look.
I had such a bad experience with the Lenovo and saw everyone else having it too, I was very shy of trying the X1. Plus the price seemed awfully high. However, I'd be interested to hear if others have a different experience.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
January 4, 2016 at 6:32 am
I've never owned a laptop or tablet, so have no advice.
January 4, 2016 at 7:16 am
Like other posters, I also have a MacBook Pro. Although mine is an early 2011 version, it still keeps chugging along. I upgraded the memory to 16GB (yeah, I know, unsupported but it works great!:cool:), the HD to 500GB and have VMware Fusion running a Windows 7 VM that allows me to seamlessly run Windows apps right along the Mac apps including SQL Server 2012 Developer Edition. My only gripe is the Mac version of office is rather dated and is not laid out the same as the Windows version, but that's a Microsoft issue and not an Apple issue.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sqlrv
Website: https://www.sqlrv.com
January 4, 2016 at 7:18 am
Grant Fritchey (1/4/2016)
I had such a bad experience with the Lenovo and saw everyone else having it too, I was very shy of trying the X1. Plus the price seemed awfully high. However, I'd be interested to hear if others have a different experience.
Count me as an unhappy user of a company-supplied Lenovo laptop. Quite possibly one of the worst laptop's that I've ever used!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sqlrv
Website: https://www.sqlrv.com
January 4, 2016 at 7:20 am
No idea if my experience is consistent with others but I've always found ASUS hardware to be pretty sturdy. Recommended their laptops to several people, I always use their motherboards and graphics cards - never had any issues. In particular their PCBs seem to be thicker and physically stronger than much of the competition.
I've even still got their original TF101 transformer tablet running a cyangenmod build of KitKat and it's still going strong!
Their fancy ultrabooks look very nice but they're a bit behind re: RAM. They seem to go for 8GB single channel 1600MHz stuff soldered to the motherboard which is very disappointing considering they are offering powerful i7 quads for the CPU.
Ben
^ Thats me!
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January 4, 2016 at 7:23 am
I just picked up a 15" MBP last month to replace an old (2010) Lenovo laptop. I love it. It's fast, light and I can develop in every environment I need. The retina screen looks phenomenal. It set me back about 2500, with most extras except the 1TB SSD...I couldn't justify $400 for an extra 500GB of storage.
With VMWare workstation, I've already got 2 Windows VM's and several Linux VM's that I can l launch whenever I need.
January 4, 2016 at 7:35 am
BenWard (1/4/2016)
No idea if my experience is consistent with others but I've always found ASUS hardware to be pretty sturdy.
I had an ASUS previously and loved it the whole time I used it, which was for about 2 years. I was making last minute adjustments for a presentation, saved my changes then shut it down for the 1 hour drive to the site where it refused to start again for the presentation! Thankfully I had presence of mind to have a backup of my slides on thumb drive and was able to use someone else's laptop! That's when I bought my MBP and I've been quite happy with it.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sqlrv
Website: https://www.sqlrv.com
January 4, 2016 at 7:44 am
My problem with the Mac is that I truly hate the OS. I guess if I were shopping (and I'm not, and hope not to be for at least one more year, travelling with laptops does beat them up), I could look at one, but then I'd want to make it boot to Windows. Even just running VMs from within the Mac OS crawls up my spine.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
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