Wait til april. I've been waiting for a while, it looks like lenovo is going to start shipping laptops with 16gb sticks around april (couple of non official confirmations) (this will also cause the price of the ram to drop down from its current 300usd price point I hope)<p>The main issue with most ultrabooks is they only get a single sodimm slot. Or in other words have a hard limit of 8gb. These 16gb sticks[1] have been round a while but an issue with the cpu's prevented them from registering, the broadwell series has sorted that.<p>As for recommendations, I was tossing up between x1c 3rd gen and a macbook / second air / 16gb mbp. I'm now holding out for april and likely going to go with a thinkpad X250 - its a bit fatter but its 12.5" and has upgradable insides (ram/hd.) This is mostly down to the fact that I prefer a solid keyboard over anything else and the x1c just doesn't have the travel to make it worth ditching apple. (I'd take another MBA over going with x1c)<p>Options:<p>- x1c - nice but too thin for key travel like a fatter thinkpad, qhd will kill battery life, at least it has track point
- x250 - fatter but small, good kb with decent travel, upgradeable / replaceable insides + battery, shitty screen
- mba - can't really complain, had my mba since late '11 no issues what so ever.
- mb - nice everything, only a single port though, depending on usage you might not be able to deal
- mbp - far better spec's than all and still cheaper / thinner than lenovos (aus taxes destroy lenovo v mac..)<p>All of the above will run linux but have some issues until problems get sorted, nothing a deal breaker. For me, the x250 is in first place but I don't mind a fattop and the keyboard is far too important to me. (I don't mind crappy screens while coding so much) Trackpoint vs mac trackpad is a 50-50 for me also but I wouldn't want anything less than either of those.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.intelligentmemory.com/dram-modules/ddr3-so-dimm/" rel="nofollow">http://www.intelligentmemory.com/dram-modules/ddr3-so-dimm/</a>
I like the low-end Asus machines. They're not as nice as Asus Zenbooks but still nicer than anything non-Mac in regard to build quality, keyboard feel, and ports.<p>E.g.,
<a href="http://www.cnet.com/products/asus-vivobook-x202e-dh31t/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cnet.com/products/asus-vivobook-x202e-dh31t/</a><p>Once you swap in an SSD it performs well enough for normal dev work.
I'm running Ubuntu on a Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus (<a href="http://www.samsung.com/global/ativ/ativbook9plus.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.samsung.com/global/ativ/ativbook9plus.html</a>) with no issues and battery life is good. Nearly all media keys worked out of the box, as well as wifi.
There was discussion on Slashdot yesterday about the Thinkpad X1 Carbon:<p><a href="http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/03/14/1454240/tested-lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon-update-w-intel-broadwell-self-encrypting-ssd" rel="nofollow">http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/03/14/1454240/tested-l...</a>
The new Chromebook ? (<a href="http://www.google.com/chromebook/pixel" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/chromebook/pixel</a>). I don't know if it's possible to replace ChromeOS for Linux...
i had the same problem and was looking around for a new notebook. ihad some performance issues with my previous one, lackness of gpu proccessing and couldn't run multiple monitors at the same time for a long time, i wasn't able to calculate molecular foldings and handle very big chunks of data at the same time with it, by the way that machine had a first-gen i5 and nvidia gt330m (1gb of anciency). so i ought to buy a new laptop; my little goliath.<p>anyway this is what i am trying to say: define your needings then go shopping, or ask with that way.<p>my needings was as yo can figure, was listed above. so i bought an lenovo a z5070 < <a href="http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/z-series/z50/?sb=:000001C9:00012E34" rel="nofollow">http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/z-series/z50/?sb...</a>: ><p>you know there is a huge scandal and they are trying to cope with that with giving huge discounts! i think it is a good time for buying a lenovo, if only you'll run it as a linux box. by the i hate windows and i'm so lucky they don't care. i think windows should be a keyboard company, their keyboards are definitely awesome. < update was for keyboards >
What about the new Razer blade ? I'm in the same situation as the OP but my company is keen to get me the laptop I want (my Zenbook was great but its 4GB or unupgradable RAM is a bummer) so I don't really care about the price.
I am running double-system(windows 10 and ubuntu) at Samsung Ativ Book 8, they both run smoothly, and battery life can reach about 7 hours for both system.