Is there anyone who's worth giving a try against the Mac onslaught and mindshare? I believe that Apple's hardware is simply superb. Is there any vendor that I can spend ~ USD 600 on a laptop and get a decent value for money? (Had pretty bad experience with Asus, Sony Vaio :-( )
I replaced my Macbook Pro with a System 76 Pangolin, which has since been replaced by the Gazelle but is roughly in your price range ($750 or so).<p>Pros:<p>Nice CPU stats - I could mine dogecoin effectively on the Pangolin, not so much on the (albeit 5 year old) MBP. It seems to be roughly equivalent to an AWS m3.xlarge instance. Trackpad is flush with the case, which prevents food crumbs & dirt from getting stuck in it like it did with the MBP. Pretty rugged construction. Haven't had any reliability issues and I've had it a year or so. Good display. Has a numeric keypad and the cursor navigation keys, unlike the Mac. Linux "just works", since Ubuntu comes pre-installed with auto updates. Often a lot easier to get many UNIX programming packages working on Ubuntu/apt-get than on MacPorts, and you don't face deployment issues because of the OS being different from other UNIX systems<p>Cons:<p>Wireless sucks - it won't work with 5GHz at all and often has reception issues with 2.4GHz in my crowded apartment complex. Keyboard and trackpad takes some getting used to, because of the keypad your hands are over the left side a lot. I miss the MagSafe power adaptor, I used to trip over my cord all the time. Battery life isn't as good as on the Macs. Can't do iOS development, and can't use Mac-only software like many games.<p>On the whole I'd say the Mac had slightly better quality, but the Pangolin (at half the price) gave better value. If you're on a budget I'd definitely give it a try.
I cannot speak to the $600 range, but I have had good luck with a Lenovo x201 – I have been using one exclusively with linux for the past ~4 years. Things pretty much worked right out of the box (using both Ubuntu and Arch Linux).
It is not a high-end notebook construction-wise, but I have had very good luck with a Toshiba S70 with a full-hd screen. $499 on woot and it has a 17.3" screen, i7, a second sata bay and 2 open DIMM sockets. Battery life is good and it uses a common power adapter. It has reasonable internal speakers (better than average, not a gamer machine). Mint 17 runs like a clock and all hardware is supported by a standard install.<p>I wouldn't want to drop it though...
Love my ThinkPad W530. It's not in your price range though.<p>I'd see if one of the ThinkPads is in your range, and look the model number up, so you can see what experiences others have had with that model.<p>I know on my W530, everything works. But it's $$$$$$.
I have an Asus ux31a zenbook prime (i5/4g/256g), running Ubuntu 13.10 currently, everything works fine except for the ambient light sensor. I had to have the keyboard fixed under warranty about 4 months in, otherwise it has been great. You can pick up a refurbished model in your price range.
I bought my wife an ASUS laptop earlier this year for less than that. She gave it back to me, largely because of not liking windows 8.1.<p>Good physical construction, but the touchpad is quite oversensitive. I use it only occasionally, but it seems pretty solid.
recently: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8260733" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8260733</a><p>I'm a Thinkpad fan myself (T61/X230), although that comment by 'zanny isn't wrong. If you're going to go the Thinkpad route, make sure you read reviews of the screen options for the specific model you're interested in.