Hi guys I want to buy a laptop for programming, but I couldn’t figure out what i really want .
my budget range from 600$ to 1200 .
I found these laptops in the market
(i3 - 4g ram - 256 giga ssd) for 600$
(i5 - 8g ram - 512 giga ssd) for 800$
(i7 - 16g ram - 512 giga ssd) for 1200$
and also ryzen 3 5 and 7 .
here what I want you to Know :
1- I want to use this laptop for programming only (and browser of course),
2 - I will programming for android (for now ),that’s mean i need to install android studio , IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse (maybe other).
so I’m afraid if I buy 1200$ laptop i will regret it , because don’t need that much ram or cores or ssd capacity.
and if i buy 600$ i will regret it too ,because it will be too slow or not ideal for programming,less ram -less capacity -less core
I was depressing for long time and I’m slowly back on track so i don’t know what going on ( on tech world).
and also there are laptop 2 in 1 (laptop and tablet) with pen, is it worth to buy ?.
dose the laptop now upgrade-able in terms of ram , saying this because of what going on in part replacement issue (like apple ).
so help please what should I buy.
pardon my English not my first Language, and thanks in advance.
Edit : thank you guys very much , that’s really help and very informative. 👍 😍
I second the Mac recommendation. I use Linux on my desktop, but use Mac for laptop, after 6 years of using MBP (I still use my mid-2015 15" MBP for mobile development and day to day work), I can vouch for their quality (but skip the 2017, 2018, butterfly keyboard + touchbar crap, our company have buttload of those broken). Their M1/M2 battery life is just out of this world.
If OP worry about spending big and having buyers remorse, I recommend MBP.
I have an x86 MacBook.
How well do the M-series MacBooks work if you want to run Windows or Linux in a VM?
From what I’ve read: not well.
I do a substantial amount of software development inside a Linux VM on an M2 Pro. Runs fine. The guest OS is AArch64 too.
I use Lima for this.