A Programmer's Plea to Laptop Makers

I want an OMAP-based laptop that can run off batteries for 24+ hours on a single charge, that runs Linux, emacs and Django on a decent, 800+ line screen.<p>The way it is, the article is a series of complaints of a Visual Studio user who, appearently, can't rearange the windows in its own environment. Not everyone uses Visual Studio and most of those who use should be able to set up their environment comfortably.<p>I am fine with a widescreen laptop: I just use the rest of the screen for things other than source-code. For me, any landscape screen is less than perfect. I would much rather use a portrait monitor, but a laptop with a portrait display is less than practical.<p>I never used a square screen... Anyone willing to sell an NCD-16 1024x1024 X terminal?

He wants a 10K RPM HDD and a laptop that stays cool ... Those two seem mutually exclusive to me. It takes a lot of energy to spin platters that fast, and it all gets turned into heat in the end. MLC SSDs are pretty cheap these days - if you really do that much dev work on your laptop, invest a few hundred dollars in a good one.

&#62; Most code is in the first 80 characters, so having the abililty to see 300 characters across usually just leads to a bunch of excessive whitespace.<p>Why isn't there a horizontal line-wrap as well as vertical? A text editor that, when stretched horizontally beyond 80 columns, creates actual "text columns" ala newspapers, and flows line 103 to the top of column 2 after line 102 hits the bottom of column 1. Wouldn't be that hard, would it?

I used a ThinkPad T40 last summer, and I was surprised at how much I grew to like it. But one thing drove me crazy: F1 was where esc should be: <a href="http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/sc/20947059-2-200-DT4.gif" rel="nofollow">http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/sc/20947059-2-200-DT4.gif</a><p>Clearly, the keyboard layout was not designed by a vi user. Took me a few weeks before I was moving my hand far enough to hit esc and not F1.

This is one reason why learning either vi or emacs key mappings and then using those in your IDE of choice is a vital skill. With these under your belt, your hands should just about never have to leave the home row on the keyboard and you can forget about where the freakin Home key is.

I don't think the laptop manufacturers really understand how important that Home block is to developers. It effectively rules out all but two manufacturers from consideration. The <i>only</i> choice of development machine is a Thinkpad or a Dell (and only certain models from each line). All other brands have eliminated themselves by unrolling that key block.<p>The Widescreen point also hit home, but since there are only two laptop options anymore, and both of those offer models with a sanely proportioned 15.4" display, it's not really an issue anymore.

The only point I disagreed with was the weight vs. heat one. I travel a lot (think hitching across Africa, not flying to NYC on business), and the laptop accounts for most of the weight in my pack. I very rarely use it on my lap for any extended length of time, but there are times where I carry it on my back for hours. 4 extra pounds would be a dealbreaker.

No sane person would use a fullscreen laptop, unless perhaps their ONLY task was programming. Even then, it makes more sense to me to have my vim window take up half the screen and something else relevant, say a browser, take up the other half. Fullscreen is dead, please don't try to bring it back.

&#62; But for the typical Visual Studio developer, this usually isn't the case.<p>You VS people sicken me. Speak for theeself, heathen! <i>{C-x 3 | Mod-Shift-Enter}</i>