In my not-so-humble opinion (having skimped and got a 1280×800 instead of 1920X1080) got for the higher resolution. I have been kicking myself for the 3 years I’ve had my laptop that I didn’t drop the extra $ to do so. As for the I7 vs I5 vs I3, buy the fastest your wallet will let you. The SSD is a tossup. I would prefer to go for a dual ssd (for /) and standard drive (for home and swap) but not too many models have that.

Get an SSD, even if you do it after market. My laptops nothing special but I can cold boot win7 to post startup aps in 30 seconds. Freaking awesome. And application launches are instantaneous.

And having a small drive 64gb forces you to keep your files lean and backup/archive regularly.

On the stolen note I’m looking for an anti-theft software that uses webcams right now. The closest thing I’ve found for windows is: http://www.keylemon.com/product/ found via this article: http://lifehacker.com/#!393274/do-more-with-your-webcam-with-free-tools I know your a nix guy I just haven’t looked into it.

I want my anti-theft software to take a picture log of every login attempt, as well as record location via network ip, and send it to somewhere secure.

Yeah, I am not so worried about the CPU much anymore, as any of them should be more than powerful enough. I have witnessed SSD in an older laptop that showed amazing performance. One thing I have noticed is the hybrid drives out there that give you a few gig of SSD and the rest as the old school platter. I remember the old Dell Latitudes used to have the ability to have 2 hard drives to do exactly like you wanted to do.

Like you, a couple of years ago I purchased a cheap LCD for my desktop that is 1440×900, and I have been kicking myself for not getting a better one then.

What I have done with my laptop at 1280×800 is shrunk the fonts down. This kind of helps, but it doesn’t fix everything, and on 1280×800, you can only shrink a font so much before it looks like crap. I know a 8pt font on my old 1680×1050 looked awesome, but looks like crap on the 1280×800 display.

Yeah, others I have talked to on IRC are telling me to go with SSD as well. Yeah, I was looking the sizes and everything, and to be honest I was using only like 40GB out of the 120/160GB drive the stolen machine had. And even with that, I could purge it down and use an external drive for a lot of the stuff on there.

As for anti-theft stuff, someone pointed me to http://preyproject.com/ . It looks pretty decent. Also, NSFW, but this YouTube video is absolutely hillarious and entertaining about this very same subject - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4oB28ksiIo

Buying laptops is really hard these days. If you want an affordable one with a high resolution display, your options are limited. It gets even worse if you try to find a non-glossy display. Another important thing for me is low noise.

SSD is absolutely worth it. I won’t buy a conventional hard disk ever again. If you don’t need that much space, they are more or less affordable (up to about 64 GB). Regarding the CPU; it doesn’t have to be a Core i7, IMHO.

Have you seen this Sony Vaio? http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Sony-Vaio-VPC-EB4X1E-BQ-FHD-Notebook.49194.0.html
Relatively cheap for a Vaio. But also very loud under load (as in compiling C++…) so personally I wouldn’t consider it.

Lenovo will release Sandy Bridge based Thinkpad Edge models in april. But you probably don’t want to wait that long (and they have the low 16:9 resolution). I’m especially interested in the E220 as a netbook replacement. http://www.slashgear.com/lenovo-to-show-off-at-least-five-new-thinkpad-notebooks-at-ces-02122140/

I’m currently using a 2010 15″ MacBook Pro with the high resolution, matte screen (1680×1050). It was ridiculously expensive and I only bought it because I got a 0% interest financing deal. But I wouldn’t buy it again. The hardware is great and all, but you don’t get twice as much from it compared to those models you listed in your post. It’s way beyond the point of diminishing returns for laptops.

Out of the 3 id say system76 have the best offer for what you are getting. Plus Carl is a cool guy

Yeah, I looked at both the Sony Vaio and the Lenovo. The Lenovo has a couple of close ones, and are even still under consideration as well.

Looks like the System76 also has a keyboard similar to the one that Google Chrome CR-48 systems come with, which is nice. The more I look at the System76 the more I like it, however ZaReason has hooked me up in the past and I would feel bad if I didn’t take them into serious consideration. I think it is only fair to toss them some money, however that bang for the buck with System76 is really damn nice.

If you are looking at “bank for the buck”, I wander why you are looking at Dell Latitudes at all. Those are clearly not pure power machines, they are designed for a reliable work environment. For example, with a Latitude you get 3 years warranty on site repair on the next work day. I doubt that System 76 can provide similar services.
If you don’t care about those quality services, you should focus on consumer products and not on the enterprise market.

I for myself am a happy Dell Latitude owner and would take it over any other system any day.

Zareason are awesome but system76 are making really nice computers nowadays. Im really considering getting one when I get some money together.

The reason I was looking at the Latitude is because the same reason you state, and that my experience with them in the past has been nothing but amazing. I didn’t even think about that warranty garbage, but because you brought that up, that got me to thinking about the Dell Outlet stuff. You used to be able to get great systems for really good prices on there. I will have to check that over now

All I need is about $1,000 and I could get one I am researching some lower end stuff now, but I would hate to get something on a whim and hate it later or it won’t do exactly what I need it to do. Though with an i7, I could do make -j9

I have a Dell Latitude E5500 and this is quite great machine.
Quite strong and balanced corpus.
The only thing I don’t like is the speakers - it’s a little bit quiet.

Be aware that some SSDs suffer really hard reliability and performance problems when you use encryption.(like you used on your old laptop) Some SSDs with Sandforce chips offer AES encryption, but your BIOS has to support ATA passwords, which a lot of them don’t.

Yeah, all of the Latitudes have crappy speakers that I have witnessed. Don’t use much multimedia out of the system, so that isn’t an issue for me really.

I got a good destkop for €500 and its around the same specs as the i7 its an amd x4. Well ill be getting mine in about a month when I start at the ubuntu one team as an intern. So shouldnt be too long

Yeah, I should probably look at AMD stuff too, just been a while since I have. Also, €500 is like $1,000,000 USD now :p

AMD are so cheap nowadays oh and you should look into the new SoC chips coming in from Intel and AMD they are really nice looking and the computers that they are being put into are pretty small and nice.

Oh and with that conversion rate id buy a system76 one with all the trimmings when I get the money.

For work we just got some Latitude E6510 with the 1920×1080 Display and 256GB SSD. Apart from the location of the pageup/-down-keys and that I had no chance to test it with any linux distro - a really nice setup. The build quality looks good and the weight is also OK. It’s the first laptop with a SSD for me and I love it! It’s so quiet …

The 6510 has a weird Alps touchpad/trackpoint that wasn’t supported by the kernel back in September, last time I looked. As a trackpoint user I can say the touchpad can’t be turned off and is super sensitive in opensuse 11.3, and the scroll for the trackpoint requires hacking the kernel source.

… by the way Dell already anounced the E6520 …

One thing to note, last time I checked the i3 series did not have hardware virtualization. Might want to go with something i5 or better.

Oh, Dell Outlet has a few sweet deals, and a couple of really great deals for under $800. The one deal for under $800 is pink, but oh well, nothing a few stickers can’t hide I need to win the lotto or get Shuttleworth to hit my donate button over there -> in the sidebar

Yeah, i3 is out of the game, and supposedly you don’t get virtualization on anything under the i5-5xx series. Found some awesome i7 quad core prices on dell outlet. A scratch or dent doesn’t bother me, and you get the same warranty.

Wish this was like cycling, where someone could sponsor me Much easier for me to get discounted cycling equipment than it is computer equipment

A SSD is worth its full price only in a major read-oriented system. I doubt if, over the years of `make -j9`, it would perform as it was supposed to.

Cleaning it is slightly difficult as well.

I think I wish I’d had your budget

I can’t help, I have an i3 and I’m happy with it, but I don’t have your requirements. Good hunting!

You don’t want my budget. As it stands, I have around $300 to get a new laptop with. That’s why I am scrambling trying to figure out a way to gather some cash quickly. Consulting has been paying the bills but not leaving me with much money to play around with. I hate credit cards, but I am thinking about one right about now, but I hate having a payment. I only like to purchase stuff with cash.

Personally I’d rather go with this: http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087&current-category-id=4F2AFFFF52964FE2BCF0CC608A649A77

But I guess you specifically want to support the companies who ship Ubuntu machines then.

Not to shabby, though it might be a bit small for me, plus that pesky 1280×800 resolution. It might not be to shabby though on a 12″ display. I will support whoever has the best bang for the buck for what I can afford. Right now, my top 3 are nothing more than wishful thinking. I am fairly certain I will either end up with something lower end soon, or have to wait it out and go without a dev system for a while.

Lenovo does have one thing going for them that, to me, always makes their laptops worthy of consideration-their keyboards. I’ve had my t60 since 2007, and they keyboard is still rock-solid.

Sorry to hear that your computer was stolen, Rich. : /

They do have nice keyboards, but I am looking through their current inventory and I just don’t get their prices. they are considerably more expensive with lesser specs. I still can’t find something to kill the System76 when it comes to banging the buck

I think it was either Eddie or Freddy, as I wasn’t far from their hood, and you know how those crack heads roll!

Ubuntu runs very nicely on an Apple MacBook Pro. The 13″ with an i5 is $1,200. Nice machine and it could be upgraded in time to an SSD.

In my experience, an SDD is going to have a far greater impact on performance than a faster CPU. With the choices you laid out, I’d go for the Latitude in a heartbeat. They’re solid, well built machines, and the SSD and hi res screen are huge points I’n it’s favor as a development machine.

With that said, a faster CPU would be nice - the i3 is a great CPU, but I’d feel better with at lest an i5. Seeing that it’s much easier to upgrade to an SSD down the road than to upgrade a CPU, it might be better to go with the System76 option in your list - or reconfigure the Dell with a good (7200RPM) HDD and bump the CPU up a couple notches (should be close to the same price I think.

Have you considered buying a used notebook? You will get a used lenovo T61 for around 350$, or if you really like good displays, look out for a T60p 15″ - they have an 1600×1200 IPS(!) display. Oh and the keyboards on those notebooks are awesome too..

By the way, 15% off all Dell Outlet Business laptops (Latitude, Vostro, Precision) till 3/16 with this coupon code: CSJ0Q$B35QJ3CJ. No referrals, just throwing it out there.

If there is a decent used notebook, yes. I am looking at the Dell Outlet stuff because you get a fairly large discount on an item that is dinged up, scratched, or refurbished, with the same warranty as buying new.

I am afraid that if I were to get a Mac, I might just keep OSX and never come back :p

Thanks for that heads up! Figures, the one sweet deal I am looking it is an Inspiron

That’s good to know, thanks for that heads up!

That is something I didn’t know, thanks for that heads up.

No comparison of weights? The Dell is about ⅓ lighter than the others. The Gazelle might be as fast as one, but it should be called the Hippo with regards to weight.

Dude, you almost made me ruin the only laptop left here by spitting out my drink onto it. I seriously LOL’d on that one. When it comes to weight, it doesn’t bother me much. I use a messenger bag and have always used tanks for laptops.

First off, some things to think about:

How much hard drive space do you need? Would an SSD constrain you too much, or can you make that work?

The System76 has the new CPUs, and the others are first-gen.

System76 also has another 15″ model, the Pangolin, which is currently being redesigned and should be available on the site again soon.

From what you’ve told us, I’d think:

You probably don’t want the 1366×768. You could make it work, but if you’re buying brand-new gear it should be what you really want.

I don’t think you *need* the i7. The i5 should be sufficient, but by all means the i7 would be nice.

Assuming the total capacity isn’t a huge issue, you definitely will appreciate a good SSD. And by good I mean one of Intel X25-M, OCZ Vertex 2, or Crucial C300.

I’ve been using a System76 Pangolin with the first-gen i7 and Intel SSD, and it’s been pretty great for me. The responsiveness of the company is a huge credit, and I think you’ll find they have a lot in common with ZaReason in that respect.

I bought a HP TM2-2090 a couple of months ago and aside from a few issues with the hybrid graphics system it has been working surprisingly hard for the specs.

Core i3 330UM, 1.2GHz (Virtualization enabled)
4GB DDR3 RAM
OCZ Vertex2 120GB SSD
12″ 1280×800 multi-touch display

The ram and the after-market SSD sure helps a lot, I have been running multiple virtualized copies of Windows at times and the experience has been smooth. I mainly use the integrated intel GPU because the proprietary ATI drivers has issues and the free radeon driver has worse performance than the intel.

i personally think you should go for dell.

1. it got ssd. no matter how far your processor are going to hold it back, its still the most upgrade that will bring big impact.
2. althought it use core i3 from 1st generation (not sandy bridge), but still it got 4 threads for you to play on. unless you’re running multithreading (perhaps, virtualization)
3. dell is better than zareason, the different between them just zareason got a nvidia gpu. but system76 core i7 kicking ass. it would a perfect machine if ssd replace the traditional hdd. since you’re using it for productivity, smaller ssd will be enough. why? because ssd has some limitation in read/write operation and you don’t want to waste the cycle with something you can load up from external hdd.

that’s what i thought. hope it will help

Good stuff to know, thanks for that input. Yeah, I am thinking I must go with something like a 60GB SSD, 80GB would be great. I could probably even get away with smaller than 60GB, and then I could push my KDE branches to an external flash drive. Ooh, forgot about that option. Hrmm, more research to do!