Hardware New laptop help, need one for programming

[learnin2hack]

Hello I want to get a new laptop for Christmas.
I would like to use it for coding in eclipse, python and websites.
I would like it to be as cheap as possible hopefully under 250 should I buy second hand?
Please help

 

[Originality]

Be careful about second hand goods, as there will be no guarantee or warranty.

You don't have any special needs, so any laptop in the last 12 or so years will be enough. Look in local shops and retailers for your country and pick any one you can afford. The only 3 specs to keep an eye on, CPU (the stronger, the faster it'll compile for you), RAM (means more data cached for compiling), and HDD space.

 

[FAST6191]

"and websites"

I do not do java stuff so I can not speak to eclipse (what I have see has it as far from the lightest program out there but nothing too drastic if you have memory for it) but the other two are fairly light (indeed probably working in just a basic text editor assuming you are not heading down the dreamweaver and high end graphics path). That said increasingly numbers of web developers I meet/speak to are running virtual machines so as to have every version of IE still available (and if you can pull an IE6 only web fronted application into the modern world you have a fairly highly sought after skill) so I can not entirely get away with saying "just a text editor".

I am seeing some quite nice laptops that will do you well on the second hand market (and I would not really touch a €250 new laptop or indeed look at one for fear I might break it), indeed I have done up a handful for a few clients these last few months and they have relieved me of a few of my reservations about dealing with second hand laptops. I believe the financial year for you guys follows the calendar year so you might get lucky with an ex company laptop (sell them off and depending how you do it you get a lower tax bill or credits towards something else which makes end of financial years a good time to go looking) over the coming weeks as well. Be careful if you do though as XP runs out next year so people might be inclined to offload a bunch of old XP machines. Bonus though is if they are proper business class machines they are usually pretty solid on the reliability front.

 

[learnin2hack]

Thank I was looking in to buying a good laptop with no OS to lower costs and put on Ubuntu.
Is this possible.

 

[Jamstruth]

If you find somebody selling a laptop with no OS then go for it. Just remember you'll be living with limited applications on Linux and a few other glitches from being a hobbyist platform (its still pretty damn stable with its base build. Its just some drivers can be iffy)

You don't need too much for Eclipse (several of my coursemates run it on Netbooks quite decently) but I can't say much for the WebDev tools. I'd say find something in the "Core i" series if possible. Even a 2 year old one of those is still holding up quite well these days. Just increases the longevity on it a bit.

 

[learnin2hack]

I have decided to get this laptop http://www.adverts.ie/laptops/hp-laptop-with-1680x1050-resolution/2164830
What would be the best linux distro for running eclipse, python and browsing the web?

 

[YoshiInAVoid]

I've been using Fedora 17 stable and it's been great. I highly recommend that.

 

[FAST6191]

Not a bad little laptop for the price you seem to have payed and a nice resolution to boot (congrats- finding a laptop with a good res has not been the easiest since they dropped in resolution around the end of the P4 era)- do remember to pull it apart and check the fans and maybe keep that extra 100 for either some more RAM (although 2 gigs is enough until you go silly CAD/video stuff or proper virtual machines) or a new hard drive.

Best linux distro for what you want- pretty much any that are not specialist or cut down (puppy linux and such) although realistically you could probably get things done there as well; python, dev grade text editors and firefox are not exactly exotic packages. I could go further but it would probably be a list of the first five from http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major
I can't say I have done much with Fedora of late and I have never really gone in for ubuntu (why would I when mint exists) but I have the others running various types of computers I have to be able to rely upon and I have no problems with them at all. For a machine of that vintage the worst case scenario is probably you get familar with ndis or just buy a nice wireless card (decent atheros things are not a lot at all and can do N speeds)

 

[learnin2hack]

Not a bad little laptop for the price you seem to have payed and a nice resolution to boot (congrats- finding a laptop with a good res has not been the easiest since they dropped in resolution around the end of the P4 era)- do remember to pull it apart and check the fans and maybe keep that extra 100 for either some more RAM (although 2 gigs is enough until you go silly CAD/video stuff or proper virtual machines) or a new hard drive.

Best linux distro for what you want- pretty much any that are not specialist or cut down (puppy linux and such) although realistically you could probably get things done there as well; python, dev grade text editors and firefox are not exactly exotic packages. I could go further but it would probably be a list of the first five from http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major
I can't say I have done much with Fedora of late and I have never really gone in for ubuntu (why would I when mint exists) but I have the others running various types of computers I have to be able to rely upon and I have no problems with them at all. For a machine of that vintage the worst case scenario is probably you get familar with ndis or just buy a nice wireless cart (decent atheros things are not a lot at all and can do N speeds)

I was thinking more Ram, new battery and dual boot the Linux distro that I choose(I have no idea which to choose I would like it to be simple but be able to run python, eclipse and notepad++ and also have a good media player)

 

[FAST6191]

Ram and battery works for me (I just assume batteries are enough to save in the event of a power cut and go from there when it comes to laptops these days).

Although I love notepad++ on windows it does sadly appear to be windows only although linux has many great text editors that do much the same thing as it (I would probably start out with Geany as it shares a common base with notepad++). Media player- as long as you install the KDE libs Amarok works fine (and GTK libs do for Rhythmbox if you prefer that instead).
On media players- I do tend to go for the all in one approach but especially on linux there is a lot to be said about having video on one program and audio on another and especially if you do a lot of running things from a network share.
Again those those first five are all pretty good and the days of having to mess around at the command line to get even the basics working for desktop linux are long gone (unless you actually want to mess around at the command line to get things up and running in which case you can do that too). Your new machine should be more than capable of handling a liveCD and almost by default linux separates the install and user files which makes upgrades and changing distros pretty easy.

 

[learnin2hack]

Would that laptop be able to run any linux emulators?

 

[Originality]

All laptops can.

Rule of thumb, the stronger the CPU (as in Intel), the smoother the emulation.

 

[learnin2hack]

Turion 64 X2 TL-60 2GHz could this processor run a psx emulator and (not likely) run a ps2 emulator at a playable speed

 

[FAST6191]

PS1 - anything can manage that. The trouble usually came in figuring out how to set up the plugins for ePSXe (I have not done much recently with it but it looks like they improved the situation there) and there is also http://psxemulator.gazaxian.com/ (which has a linux version no less).

PS2.... I do not want to dismiss it out of hand and you might be able to plod through the odd puzzle game or RPG that does not require a reasonable framerate to work well but I would not get rid of PS2 capable hardware yet.

 

[learnin2hack]

Ok Id better fire up 007 Agent Under Fire