Most developer laptops have ~13" and smaller displays. What’s up with that? In my opinion, such a small machine is miserable to use even for everyday tasks, not to mention spending hours every day programming on one.
I’ve never understood that either. A 17.3" screen has going on 2x the area of an 13" one and more screen estate is always (?) better.
I suppose somebody with really, really good eyesight and a 13" 4K monitor could see the same amount of stuff at the same time as somebody with a bigger monitor. But I don’t think tiny text is normal on them.
What exactly is a developer laptop?
You can get whatever screen size you want really. The macbook air 13" is very useful to me precisely because it’s small and portable.
How are you finding viewing all of the call stack/watches/breakpoint/console etc windows while also viewing a couple of files on something that size, let alone any app with a GUI you are debugging?
I’m not, but I didn’t buy this laptop to code on.
Which goes back to the question, what exactly is a developer laptop? If it’s one with a big screen, then you get one with a big screen. Problem solved.
Are there a lack of laptops with big screens? Is there something special about a developer laptop than means none of the laptops with big screens will do the job?
It’s would just be a laptop used by a developer, there’s a phenomenon where some devs use laptops with screens that would be traditionally seen as very small. There isn’t a shortage of 15.6" laptops, the 17.3" choice is smaller (or not there if we live in Appleville).
I think it’s strange because bigger means you can see more info at the same time. I’d like a 20" screen, same width but taller.
There was this monster: https://laptopmedia.com/laptop-specs/acer-predator-21x/
Aapparently it wasn’t too popular at $9k though.
Browsing laptops again lately. Finding linux compatibility + any not too demanding must features is such a pain in the ass.
Oh lordie, that’s a beauty! I don’t care about weight or thickness of laptops at all, ideally it would be a big screen with a big, modular battery and plenty of room, expandability and repairability inside. Not $9k though since I don’t care about 2x graphics cards and 64GB of memory, don’t know what a sensible markup would be just for being bigger.
The biggest practical cost issue there is likely lack of mass production. Not a lot of people are likely to spring for something that big. I’m sure they threw a heftier price tag on top too knowing that very few would be sold simply out of nostalgia to a few people who could waste that kind of scratch. But if it is were priced reasonably, who knows? It might sell better than they think.
I would go for something like that too. Essentially, a real desktop replacement that I could easily fold up for transport. But there are limitations of screen size for close-up viewing. 15" is ok. I like 17" + full keyboard more though. 17" @ fhd can be a little low res for my eyes though. It seems like the lower threshold is about 140 ppi for me. The problem with high res is that lots of software still doesn’t support it, which is assinine. So 15" at 1080 is safe, but just on the threshold of the low res size.