If you had the option to pick a work laptop today, and no one gave a limit on spend, what would you pick?
I work in software development, often with CV+ML, LLMs, and VLMs. I know the default in that realm is getting a MacBook. My last job got me an M5 Max with 128 GB of RAM, which was nice (although I’m not crazy about MacOS). Worst case, I might fallback to a MacBook.
I’m curious what others might pick? Would anyone try to go with one of the new Spark laptops? A Framework laptop might be cool, but I don’t think I’ll get to keep it, so it might not be as beneficial. A Linux laptop with a beefy GPU might be nice, as long as the batter was decent.
Would seriously consider Qubes viability/compatibility, else it would be my own bespoke VM arrangement.
A challenge with sw dev is you tend to end up running a lot more code off the Internet than a regular user and there’s a lot of actors trying to take advantage of that.
I like to avoid stuff that has functional remote out of band management built in (Intel AMT type things).
Edit: I don’t totally trust Lenovos, but workplaces seem generally be happy to trade a bit of trust for a good hardware repair network.
Preferably a framework , thinkpad or a eurocom if they really want to spoil me and i get to pick
My new job I am getting a macbook, which is a first cause my past couple of jobs were byod and up until recently I would have never considered buying a Mac
My work is not complicated, just RAM intensive. Between the two jobs I do on this laptop, I have about 28gb worth of tabs open at any time. They’re only compute heavy whenever they first open or refresh, and only for a short burst, from then on it’s just vital to me to be able to keep the tabs alive without sleeping them and forcing them to refresh because that impedes my workflow.
So with that being the case, if money were no object, I’d probably grab the 13 inch macbook air 32gb M5. That would do my job on battery all day, smoothly, keep all my tabs, and be superlight and portable, and at only around $2k now, actually relatively not a waste of money. If I had more intensive work or used local LLMs more often, I’d look into the biggest spark I could find, just for cuda.
The ARM scene is interesting from a ‘play’ standpoint, but I wouldn’t rely on aarch64 for anything work related - Not yet at least. imo
You mentioned LLM stuffs - If running on the machine itself, I’d probably go with the most vram nvidia gpu laptop I could find that tickled me in all the right places other spec-wise. Intel and AMD gpus are catching up, but nvidia still has the ease lead and when dealing with a small single gpu LLM need, nvidia just has the ‘it just works’ lead. Although I’m super interested what Intel will be bringing to the unified memory space in the near future.
That all being said, I’m not much a brand loyal guy but i’d probably look at Framework and Lenovo first. Framework not only has a great product but I also like how much they are helping support the Linux ecosystem.
I have a personal grudge against Apple for… reasons, so they will never be on my list fortunately.
I didn’t mention, this is at a startup, so I literally can pick whatever and they reimburse me. The MacBook was a strong contender just bc it’s got a nice screen, good battery, and up to 128 GB or RAM (although it’s slower for LLMs). The Spark laptops are interesting for sure, and I’m definitely curious but only for anything with Linux support.
I had not heard of Eurocom laptops before, I’ll have to do some research. Was definitely curious to see if I could find something with CUDA and large memory while still being reasonable on battery (~5-6 hours on mixed use, or 10+ on basic light load would be nice). I know Lenovo, Dell, and HP are usually the “got-tos” for larger orgs, but this won’t be a fleet laptop, so I’m my own support. A Framework laptop would be nice but seems like it might be unnecessary since it might not ever get upgraded (no idea what they do with old laptops), but I might consider it just to give them the business. I’m not in a huge rush, I have a laptop I can use for now, hence my curiousness for recommendations.
A Macbook Pro is definitely the “safe” choice, and while I get the desire to look at other options (especially since there are some cool laptops out there like Framework), I wouldn’t underestimate the advantage of both the reliability of a Macbook and the fact that in the event it dies you can bring it to an Apple store and get it fixed/replaced. For a business machine that’s a major advantage IMO.