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I've seen a lot of "Wich laptop should I buy?" questions but noone fits my needs.

I'm a web developer (situated in Italy) with actually no computer at home since mine power supply burned out (yeah it might sounds stupid but that's what it is) and I want to move into the laptops world.

This is what I'm looking for:

  • I want to get into the world of linux distros and maybe install also windows (as I mainly work onto windows project), so i'm considering using a Dual Boot system.

  • "CPU > GPU" As I will repair my old desktop pc with a new power supply, I will mainly play videogames into my old pc, so a super powerful Gpu isn't needed. Let's say that "the heaviest game" that I would play wuold be League of legends or something like that. Mainly I will program with this pc so a nice Cpu is the way I will go go.

  • 16 gb of ram, so I can run as many tasks as I needs, but i think I can get away with 8 gb of ram.

  • A nice keyboard is mandatory as I will be writing stuff all the times.

  • The chances of me watching any movies on this pc are very high, so a decent display would be greatly appreciated.

  • No particular requests regarding the storage space and the noise of the fans

  • The thinner the better. But I could also consider "thick" computers

  • Last but not least, the price. I wuold stay in the 500 euros range. The lower it is the better.

I've seen that many of you guys are recommending the thinkpad, but i don't know which model will fits my needs best as I'm not involved into hardware as I was before.

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    "so i'm considering using a Dual Boot system" - I would recommend against this. Yes, the o/s will run quicker natively, but rebooting is a pain. I recommend a Virtual Machine (specifically Virtual Box). That might need more RAM, though, to run both at once (although Linux needs far less RAM than Windows).
    – Mawg
    Commented Nov 21, 2020 at 22:36
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    yeah it was my alternative... and I think i will go for it
    – Liiuc
    Commented Nov 23, 2020 at 7:11
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    I mean i still don't know wich laptop should I buy (and so install a virtual machine on it) xD
    – Liiuc
    Commented Nov 23, 2020 at 10:32
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    IC IC. I was once in a similar position, but base din Europe (you might want to post your location?), so bought a laptop from Amazon Germany which only had FreeDOS installed and thus avoided the "microsoft tax" which was over $100 at that time. You might want to consider not so much which to buy but where to buy it from. Btw, black friday sales might also make "when" a dimension in your choice.
    – Mawg
    Commented Nov 23, 2020 at 12:26
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    I've edited my question with my location. Regarding the stores where should I buy the laptop.... actually the one with the best price
    – Liiuc
    Commented Nov 23, 2020 at 12:35

1 Answer 1

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Not recommending a specific laptop (at least not at this stage anyway) but a couple of points, nevertheless:

  1. Do not get one with a Broadcom wireless chipset - you won't be getting it to work with Linux without a lot of difficulty (involving NDIS wrappers, if even then). Avoid them like the plague and make sure you get one with an Intel wifi chipset.

  2. I used to be the multiboot king back in the day but, these days, I wouldn't recommend it at all: whichever OS you're running, but most especially if it's Windows, if you get an infection, there's a good chance it'll worm its way in below your OS as a rootkit and subvert every other OS on on your system - and then there's no amount of 'more secure than Windows' goodness that you'll derive from Linux. Get a laptop with eSATA or a couple of external (SSD) drives that will boot from a USB port (I've even run a complete Arch setup from a simple USB key as my daily use box) and just plug in whichever one you need/want. (Or you could use the Linux Subsystem in Win10, with the caveat that it's prone to the same risk as a multiboot machine).

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  • Thank you man, i will take in mind to not buy a computer wit a Broadcom wireless chipset
    – Liiuc
    Commented Dec 9, 2020 at 12:51
  • You're welcome - it's a nightmare trying to sort it out and I just gave up bothering a long time ago: if there is a way to persuade a Broadcom to work with an NDIS Wrapper I haven't found it yet (and, so far, it's the only option there ever even has been).
    – Techsplorer
    Commented Dec 10, 2020 at 19:11

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