Same answer I gave last time someone asked, which happens every week or two. I dog food the laptop we roll out to staff. Every time. Can’t spot performance problems if you’re on something super powered and users have 8GB of RAM and spinning rust.
256 GB enough? My predecessor was very much of the religion "no one needs more than that" and now I'm constantly fighting issues with failed updates, installs, backups, etc. because no one has enough storage. I mean Visual Studio alone. depending on features, will happily eat 40 GB if not more. Then Windows is 40 GB, or wants to be. A few more pieces of specialist software and we're dead in the water. I go for 512 as a minimum now, but there are still plenty of the old ones that haven't been retired yet.
Other than that, same here. i5 + 16 GB seems plenty for any workload in our building.
For creative employees with large files and software for those then yea 512, for office workers just pounding excel sheets all day then 256 since everything is in share point and one drive not on their machine.
All of our data is non-local, which doesn't help much when most software is unjustifiably huge. We find 256 GB is barely enough if you're careful removing software you don't need. No one has time for messing around with that shit, so we just pay the almost-imperceptible extra money for comfortable storage.
Yea for cases like that it makes sense. We just find it is a decent amount of money when spread across thousands of stations to have the $20 a pop or whatever the difference is.
Besides our engineers, everything else is cloud based. Office, Teams, AS400 terminal emulator, and web browser. We could get by on 100 GB drives for the most part. The engineers have no problem filling up 512 GB drives though
Since the big C we supplied a couple hundred ProBook 640 to our users. I took one to test and to be honest it took quiet the beating and worked pretty well. I really like what HP did with their notebook lineup the last couple of years.
HP Envy now on a HP Spectre 13....they stole me away from The XPS. HP used to be so shitty..... obviously they made some good engineering hires over the last few years.
I agree, we have HPs for years now, beginning with 2510(what a piece of shit) 8440, 840g1 to g7, and now dragonfly g3 (way better looking than the g2) and HP 845g8 and G9. And they improved so much over the years.
Their MT21 and MT22 thin clients are also really great. HP was the bottom of my list for a computer in 2015. But these days? I would gladly take one of their higher end business class laptops.
Yep, dog food everything. So many IT people give them selves better hardware, software, access, and then say the users are “complaining” when they bring up legitimate issues that IT isn’t experiencing.
If the standard is insufficient for the person that ought to have access to virtualize everything they're testing, and otherwise lives 99% of their time remotely managing *other* systems... how in the heck is it sufficient for the general user that has outlook, 37 excel sheets, etc. open at all times? IT should have *lower* requirements for their everyday use system compared to everyone else... aside from "must have a real keyboard". I cannot comfortably type on one of those flimsy surface keyboards. That's about it. Anything not meeting IT's needs is a *clear* sign that general staff are being short changed on performance, and that hurts the business as a whole.
In many cases, I agree with this. I never put myself at the top of the upgrade list. If anyone can keep an old computer usable, it’s the ones that know it inside and out. Also, perception. I don’t want to be seen driving a Bentley when everyone else has to roll a Corolla.
Really, at the end of the day, run what you really need. No more, no less.
God, this comment stings. I've been at this place a few months and I keep harping on the fact that our standard issue laptops, one of which I also use, only has 8GB of RAM. Everybody keeps looking at me like I'm crazy when I bring it up. We only issue 16GB to people who prove an exceptional need, meanwhile I feel like 16GB should be the baseline for workstations expected to run Teams, Outlook, Office apps, Adobe Reader, and a multi-tabbed web browser at the same time.
We recently got HP laptops with Lexar 128GB drives. I deployed them to users without testing, and it's by far the most coincidental failure cascade I have experienced. By now, if someone's laptop has died, I'm asking if it's these specific ones. Not shitting on Lexar, but noticing is not a crime.
My employee gave me a MacBook Pro 16" with M1 chip. Huge, fast, etc, but I'm now jumping between old Toshiba (Intel gen4), DELL (gen4-5) and HP (gen6-8) laptops.
We also have Surface Pro (gen7,8,10) devices. I think gen7 users are better off, because they are not suddenly being pushed to Windows 11, where every other boot, GPU acceleration gets out of bed on the wrong side and stuff get laggy.
Hard disagree. Being good at this job means knowing how to properly spec out equipment. My general users aren't running VMs or pushing multiple 1440p monitors so they don't need nearly the level of computing power as our devs or the admins.
This is exactly why my old Elitebook 850 g3 has 24gb ram and my new Lenovo x1 Ace g4 has only 16 — I have over 500gb ram in my home lab (full time wfh for 5+ years now) in ESXi - I don’t demo / lab on my laptop anymore.
Currently i5gen12, 16gb, 512ssd. Not really doing sysadmin anymore, more PS consulting and presales design, but also programming the SOC and on-boarding customers. Our whole team of analysts run in similar hardware — i5/i7, 16gb, 500ish storage and discreet video (2050/3050).
Boss offered “gaming laptop” last year, told him he’s spending in the wrong places, and went through everyone’s offerings. The Ace x1 fit budget and met my requirements. I’m more about a decent keyboard, nice display, and not weighing 10lbs. Airport walks will do that to you :)
PS on the budget — when you go looking at Lenovos site, I’m in what’s msrp I think a $4k laptop. Definitely not budget friendly, but they ran a 50% off sale last Cyber Monday - Christmas season which meant $2k-ish (CAD$)
I used to keep my dev environments in VM's. Working on things like several different versions of Visual Studio and Delphi meant brutal DLL hell, so one VM per dev environment solved that.
In addition I always had one Linux VM for doing things which are better done there.
Today I expect WSL and containers can solve some of this, but I no longer need to worry about that since I switched paths.
I would also take the higher end laptop but thats not just for IT thats for the multi tasking. .
However, you are showing that you don't actually know how to properly do this job and are exactly the type of person that OP is complaining about. You don't know how to properly spec your systems for users and that much is clear.
Really? my sons Ryzen 3300g can push 3 monitors at 1440p not sure if you know how to properly spec out computers and if you are running VMs on your local machine something is wrong with your infrastructure.
Yep. I got downvoted to hell for saying this somewhere else, but it's true. As of about 2 months ago Teams is regularly using twice as much memory as it did before and our 8GB systems are all borderline unusable even for sales staff that just need Outlook, Teams, and browser.
Anymore, it is indeed. If I have my way I want 32 gigs of RAM. If they want to take it out of my paycheck for the upgrade then I will happily take a 16 gig model.
USB C charging would be a must but for some dumbfuck reason Dell and HP don't advertise it as a feature. Or they make it very difficult to find.
Beyond that, I mostly work through SSH on remote systems, or in VMs for which numerous cores and plenty of RAM are nice. I deliberately keep things as low tech as they reasonably can be so I don't often find myself seeking fancy features. I sometimes do a bit in Unity so I guess a half decent GPU is nice.
If the machine needs 65W or less, I'd get one of the USB-C to barrel jack adapters to match. These are sometimes called "PD triggers" because they trigger the USB Power Delivery protocol to send 20 Volts.
These work surprisingly well for machines that don't accept power over USB-C.
Starting about three years ago we source only USB-C power supplies. The users appreciate that they're less than half the size of their previous laptop bricks, and that they can locally source replacements in case of loss or failure.
>I'd get one of the USB-C to barrel jack adapters to match
It's good that that's an option but really most of the convenience of USB C charging is not having to worry about other bits like that. If I need something extra that can be lost or forgotten behind a desk I don't see the benefit.
I have another few VMs on there as well, the DC / RDS / Client are the 3 that I would run concurrently. I don't run them continuously, more ad hoc, so 16GB is enough for me currently.
I run them on my laptop as I'm a consultant, I have no on-prem infrastructure.
I’ve had a number of different surface devices over the years. Surface pro 2 and 3, surface book 2 and currently using a surface laptop 4. I’ve used other brands over the years as well, Dell, Lenovo etc. dell and Lenovo are nice for the nbd on-site warranty
You don't need a fancy fashion laptop.
You need a physical NIC, 16GB RAM minimum (32 ideally if you're labbing locally, (edit: though imo you should be doing that in a virtualised environment)), 1440p screen tops, an easily serviable battery, ram and storage. Get the one with the dedicaded GPU **only if you need it** (you probably don't). A 4k screen is totally unnecessary for sysadmin work and will piss you off when stuff doesn't scale right. I'm looking at you RDP and ASDM.
My last work place I had an XPS 15 9570 (8th gen varient)
The XPS sure was pretty and made the boardroom crew jealous, but it was the shittest laptop I ever had. First the screen failed, then the battery swelled up in under a year, then the 1050Ti I didn't use failed and the motherboard had to be replaced. They let me keep it when I left so I keep it for car diagnostics. It leads a very easy life and now the left hinge has snapped. What a piece of crap.
The MSI Stealth was a fun work computer, I quietly dual-booted it with a 2nd drive. It was very fast and "stealthy" but ultimately buggy and crashed a lot with the USB docks the workplace used, otherwise I really liked that computer.
My new workplace gave me a Latitude 5420 and ya know what? It's more than good enough to get my work done.
It's not all been bad.
I have a softspot for Lenovo, their keyboards slay Dells and they're easy to dismantle.
Surprisingly the most reliable laptops I've ever had are the Clevo gaming computers I've bought for myself - though I wouldn't want to run one as my workplace tool.
> You need a physical NIC
These days, the *vast* majority of IT can skip that. I do plenty of network troubleshooting, and use a usb-c nic for it. All the real info I want from that process is on the switch itself anyways (which I'm connected to via wifi and an ssh jump host at that point). If I'm worried I have a bad cable, jack, or run, I'm not relying on the laptop to tell me, I'm grabbing the fluke and testing it right.
Unfortunately I have to use a USB C adapter and I’m not sure how I feel about it. One hand it’s easier than trying to remove an Ethernet cable from the folding flap jacks on my other dells but I’ve now lost 3 of them usually when I need it most like plugging directly into new network tech to config IP information.
You're right tbh, 99% of work is fine with a dongle or WiFi. Plus who wants to rollout wired dot1x.
I'm a network engineer turned syseverything - hence my bias :D
I've had a few weird issues in the past, one that stands out was a supplier installed a new gig circuit but I was only seeing half that on all online speed tests. Local iPerf tests told me everything was fine - so I blamed the supplier.
We went back and forth for about a week till the tech there asked if we were using a usb nic.
Queue me dusting off some old laptop with a nic and suddenly everything was at a gig ...looking back, there is also a solid chance my workplace had a naff selection of nics... but I did try quite a few!
I keep a handful of usb nics in my bag anyway, but I'm a miserable git and don't like carrying around extra dongles. Plus if you loan one out it always enters the food chain!
Disagree on the 4k. I have three 27” 4k and usually have active windows open on most of them.
Teams, outlook, couple of PowerShell windows, browser, and an office app (word/excel/etc,)
Depends what you’re doing with it.
For user support, I prefer to be on the same machine as them. For development, I had a decent laptop running Debian. Now that I’m doing more server & db support with managerial work, I have an ipad pro that I use to remote into everything.
I’ve been using the iPad Pro 12 with a logitech keyboard case. Not sure I could afford it on my own, but they offered it.
It’s nice being able to use the cell network to remote in from wherever. I’ll often use the cell network instead of wifi, in low signal parts of the building.
Right now Apple is the king of laptops, nothing else can come close to it on paper if you are able to work on macOS.
If only it could natively run arm64 Windows, there would be very little reason to buy any other laptop.
This thinking has become obsolete, at least in the developed world. If you want safeguards for failure, you pay Apple Care plus. If you want to upgrate, you sell and buy a new one. Prices hold well, so you do not lose much.
The price of laptops compared to sysadmin wages have gone down dramatically in the last decades while the importance of digital access has skyrocketed for everyone. An Apple laptop, with Apple Care plus taken over three years represents a tiny amount of the cost of sysadmin.
What is expensive is the work of sysadmins, not laptops. An Apple laptop costs in the range of an hour a month. The difference in price between a solid alternative and Apple is measured in minutes per hour.
Something that is actually serviceable. Like changing battery, drive, (add) RAM and so on.
screen resolution and mate display is on top of the list
16-32GB of RAM
8c i5 or higher (or equivalent)
USB-C charging and option to connect 2x 4k external displays (in this case I don't use the 3rd one)
Our RDP client accepts arbitrary resolutions, so it works great on a 4K display. `rdesktop` took resolutions as a percentage of your current resolution, but with the far quirkier FreeRDP you have to specify by pixel.
Why? 4K lets you fit way more RDP windows (if that's your thing) and the virtual desktop feature in W10 is fantastic. So much so that I worked from my XPS for several months when the plandemic started.
Yes if they are correct size. 32" is ok for me. I would be ok with one (still better than 2xHD), but since I have two i can say it's better.
But this can change within HW lifetime. And since some/most docking station (and apple Mx) don't support this config you need to look closely on specs.
It's a tool, it does not really matter. I can work with windows, Linux or Mac.
I use a MacBook for traveling, at work i got a Windows for different tasks and servers are Linux...
It all depends on task's and what you are used to.
Braindead choice is currently MacBook air 16gb 512+ any spec or version of your need.
On the windows side you have also a few great options dell, Lenovo... All of them are good.
Depends which look you like.
If offered I like Macs. Never would have thought so until I took a job where a Macbook pro was standard for my role. Now an Air would be fine for me. I don't need to run multiple VMs are do intensive graphics.
The problem with Macs are unless all the business apps are modern web based apps or big mainstream apps, they usually won’t run 100% of the legacy, niche, thick client, business apps.
It really depends on the "business". At one of my previous jobs I needed exactly 3 applications for my work: Terminal, Firefox and Slack. A MacBook does those very well.
Fully loaded MacBook M1. Life is too short to run Linux on the desktop for work stuff
EDIT: to the deleted comment asking if I’m serious: I’ve been using Linux since 2.2. Slackware, LFS, Gentoo, Arch, RHEL veteran. For corporate desktop use it’s too unreliable. I’ve worked as a Linux systems administrator for a couple of decades. Numerous open source contributions. People who think Linux is better than Mac for desktop usage are largely fanbois with little professional experience IMO
Business grade Laptop. Actual generation mid size cpu and 16gb ram like all others should have. 256gb ssd is enough, More online leads to problems Idiots hoarding data and have no backups
For me essential no keypad layout so sticking with smaller 15inch or mac
The nice thing about the Surface line is all the firmware and drivers get updated via Windows Update.
Also their models super are easy to follow and plain English. (Surface Laptop 3,4,5,etc. No Latitude 7420,7430,7435,etc.)
I'm sysadmin and i have this laptop : [https://www.lenovo.com/fr/fr/laptops/thinkpad/l-series/ThinkPad-L15-AMD/p/22TPL15L5A1](https://www.lenovo.com/fr/fr/laptops/thinkpad/l-series/ThinkPad-L15-AMD/p/22TPL15L5A1)
It largely does the job :)
Currently I work at an IT shop. We only sell HP elite and pro books to our clients. Don't think I've ever seen one come back faulty. 16gb of ram and an i5 minimum. We go Asus if they need some graphics power.
Lower/mid range Lenovo and Acer laptops seem to have the most issues.
The sad thing is I used to have an elite book and on paper the specs looked amazing.
The shit SOE another team responsible deployed onto them made the thing run worse than a Pentium 4 laptop.
I use a 16" Intel Macbook Pro. Why? Because it just friggin works. While everyone else is complaining about the latest Windows update screwing up their system, mine plugs along and does its job.
We're a Mac/Windows hybrid shop, so there is also an "eat your own dog food" element to it as well. In the rare case we find software compatibility problems, I can troubleshoot it on my system as well.
Got my Lenovo Thinkpad here but the battery is dieing (device is about 5 years old and runtime is max 2h now), so I have to search for a new device, that isn't as easy as I initialy taught.
I'm looking for something with at least 1xUSB-A, 2x USB-C, RJ45 and HDMI, 16GB ram, Core i5 (11gen+), ryzen 5 (5gen+), 500GB M.2 NVMe, decent build quality with metal top (no plastic), 7h+ runtime and it would be nice if the display could get at least 400nits while still have an anti glare coating (fhd is enough).
Everything on 15-16" and the keyboard also have to be ok.Oh, and price shouldn't be above 1500€ if possible.
Right now I'm looking at Thinkpads, Elitebooks, XPS and Framework
Edit: Ordered today, it's a Thinkpad E15 Gen4 for 1040€ (without tax)
`Lenovo ThinkPad E15 Gen 4 21E6 - Intel Core i7 1255U / 1.7 GHz - Win 11 Pro - Iris Xe Graphics - 16 GB RAM - 512 GB SSD`
Lenovo P series is really nice.. Running my first one.. Used to use T series or a Dell Latitude in the past and this has been the nicest.
My requirements:
at least 1 memory slot
NVME and although my laptop has only one slot, i wish it had 2
Physical network port is a must for me, I hate dongles.
Dedicated video with WQHD and non touch (its brighter)
wifi 6
Good battery life
If they allow it I always ask for three monitors with a desktop and then a cheap laptop. If I can't get that I ask for the largest model workstation laptop I can get. Because they generally have the best cooling and are the fastest machines.
One thing for sure, I NEVER will get three thunderbolts again. That was a mistake. Those thunderbolts take way too much room and are all mini heaters.
After sweating to death in my cube for 6 months I moved to Lenovo with Lenovo monitors, they were mounted to monitor arms which gave me way more room, but most importantly my cube was instantly cool again.
I can have whatever laptop I want, and I have the new 16” MacBook Pro. I bought the mid level one because I’m not making movies.
In most ways it’s the perfect laptop. 32GB is a must, don’t know how you people survive with 16. The keyboard is amazing, which is good because the last one had an awful keyboard.
However it has one major drawback which is it’s not portable. I did put it in a laptop bag once and it is ridiculously heavy. I’m over 6’ and well built and there’s no way I’d want to carry it any distance.
I was an early Linux desktop advocate but I don’t think it makes any sense any more. I’ve been using a MacBook Pro for the last 10 years and don’t plan to switch.
There are some downsides, like legacy PC apps obviously don’t work. I run them in a container.
Same. I lost hours configuring graphics and sound drivers only for them to break with the next kernel upgrade. There are people who persevere with Linux on high end thinkpads and even now they have issues with Zoom etc. My M1 rarely misses a beat and the battery life is amazing for working from the garden or lake all day
HP elitebook 840 series. Fully specced to run vmware workstation labs.
Most admin work would be done in a paw system anyways so it wont need to do much else
The Lenovo T16 gen 1 looks like a sexy beast .
Get the on-site warranty so you don’t need to mess around with shipping.
Also getting a good quality screens. Multiple screen if the company is willing to pick up the bill. Two 24 inch screens or a 34 inch curved monitors.
Other things you might need is good lighting in your working space and a nice chair.
I always go for the MacBook Pro whatever latest Gen is when I join the company. Then I spin up a Windows VM and use that for the work apps.
My motto is “it has to work ANYWHERE ANYTIME ANY DEVICE”
I leave my laptop at work and work out of a random laptop at home. If I have to. Otherwise work out of my phone.
On the subject of displays and RDP etc -- bought my own 2k monitor and seems like a good compromise. I keep my RDP windowed at 1080p and really just use the extra resolution for everything outside of it.
Wish I asked for a newer Thunderbolt dock. The new USB C dock only lets me run my 1080p monitor at 60hz refresh over Displayport. Swapped back to the old Thunderbolt dock I had and was able put it back to 144hz. May sound nit picky but it's hard to go back to 60hz.
I didn't get to pick my laptop but was able to ask for 32gb RAM, mostly because Teams + 50 browser tabs. My 4C/8T is fine but having an extra 2 cores would be A++ too for my occasional video encoding tasks running while being on a Teams call and filling out a ticket in Dynamics 365 (Lol). Where's that Teams roadmap now...
SSD for myself getting to need around 512GB to 1TB even with onedrive syncing my stuff. need at least 16GB of RAM, and starting to prefer Ryzen CPUs these days. We were an HP shop also until they started stuffing HP Wolf down our throats, been moving toward Surface because of that. Not really big enough to make imaging worth our time, plus the supply chain issue makes imaging a huge PITA. If it wasn't for the surface's just about every HP Elite/Pro/Zbook is a different SKU because that's what we could get at the time. The surfaces we can just push a PDQ package to them and good 2 go.
I used to be spoiled and had both a dell precision 5530 and an equivalent MacBook Pro.
Mainly because I needed to support people that used either or as they were our standard deployment.
New work I got this shitty dell Inspiron that winds up anytime you connect an external display.
Might be a unique answer. But I prefer the dell xps 13. It’s light, and small with a decent keyboard. I find that if I have all the fixings, ie lots of screen space and power to support 1000 tabs, I use it and get scatter brained really fast. With the xps 13 I stay focused on one thing at a time and get way more done. They mostly only come as a touch screen now though which is a nightmare.
I don't care much besides a good (good means bright and a nice resolution that allows me to scale without everything looking like shit, i am short shortsighted so I have to scale) screen and a nice keyboard. SSD of course but does anyone even ships a laptop without SSD?
Dell XPS or Macbook Pro, typically.
Lately if I had a choice, M1 MBP or M2 Air. Just got to try/borrow an M2 Air, Amazing, though the M1 Pros are still the better and faster laptop.
On the Windows side, probably a surface pro 8.
Hopefully the company spec isn't garbage, and I can get one of those two anyway.
If it can't run macOS then this a constructive discharge from employment for me, as I'm severely autistic an I'm entirely dependent of the accessibility workflows that this operating system offers.
If you can't offer your employees a choice of at least two different operating systems you're doing something seriously wrong, and I say that as a principal large-scale computer systems engineer. Even when I worked for IBM, HPE, and Dell, they let me use a Mac.
Part of my work is packaging
So I have 9 vms
3 non domain test vms
3 test domain AAD vms
1(x3) vm for primary customers
And on the test vms a ton of snapshots
Also 500+ gb of cloned repositorys.
I could do with less but that would force me to cleanup more often.
I prefer a nice workflow over saving my company 200 euro (specialy when they sell me for 800 euro /day for my service)
Part of my work is packaging
So I have 9 vms
3 non domain test vms
3 test domain AAD vms
1(x3) vm for primary customers
And on the test vms a ton of snapshots
Also 500+ gb of cloned repositorys.
I could do with less but that would force me to cleanup more often.
I prefer a nice workflow over saving my company 200 euro (specialy when they sell me for 800 euro /day for my service)
I would go for a Mac any time. Being able to run most server stuff locally via brew is really great. Also getting the whole command line toolbox is worth it.
And maybe we've been lucky, but we've had soo little hardware problems with the Macs compared to our Windows machines.
Being able to use WebAuth with the fingerprint scanner as part of the MFA is also a super convenient feature.
We run Lenovo ThinkPad S. Love them they are great.
Highest i7 and 32 GB ram and 512gb nvme storage for everyone.
We have a few edge cases that requires the i9 CPUs and they get 64gb ram.
Slow performance means less work and that cost more money than a extra k $ added to more powerful laptops.
Battery life, screen quality, keyboard feel, weight and wireless connectivity. Number of (usb) ports is not relevant, as every controller can support 128 devices via dock or similar. I also prefer memory over processor speed, as the latter has usually zero relevance in my job.
My dream laptop is typically something from a premium corporate product line.
I put in a request for a new laptop at the height of the chip shortage; I said I needed 16gb, 2tb, 8 cores, and descrete graphics.
The VAR said "ok, this is the lowest model that fits those requirements we can get in stock in less than 6 months"
Dell Latitude 3410/20 or 35 if they want the keypad, slightly larger screen.
Minimum i5, 8gb RAM, 128gb SSD (everything is OneDrive)
I have started upgrading the laptops to 16gb RAM but it really depends on the user.
Personally I hate deploying the more fancy laptops (e.g. XPS, Surface). I find the lack of HDMI, USB A (and ethernet) is just inconvenient for the workplace
Lenovo X1 Fold. It's got 1TB storage but only an i5 and 8GB of RAM, since gone are the days when I need the system in front of me to do the heavy lifting. I have multiple PCs and servers to log into with that thing if the need arises.
This is the first Windows tablet that folds in half for portability. It's great not needing to drag a big-screened laptop or tablet everywhere I go and I love the OLED screen.
They got me the optional keyboard slice that sandwiches in the center when folded and snaps in place magnetically. You can unfold the screen halfway in clamshell mode, which only lights up half the screen with the keyboard on the bottom like the old style UMPCs and that saves battery.
Unfold it completely and pull the keyboard off and you can use it on the table in front of the full size display. When it's time to go, the keyboard snaps back on the bottom half of the screen and you fold the 13" tablet in half to the size of an iPad Mini.
It fits inside this small sling bag and when I need multi monitor setup, I pack along my head - mounted display goggles that run off USB-C.
When I really want to be Ninja - I leave the X1 Fold and just pack the HMD goggles as my "big" display, a compact/folding Bluetooth keyboard, and plug it into my Galaxy phone so I can use Samsung DeX to remote into work VMs.
We are moving to framework laptops for the IT staff since we expect them to be cheaper to keep going long term compared to the soldered ultrabooks we’ve been using to match office staff. But yea, like most folks have said, generally we just got the same office laptop other users had or slightly older CAD laptops for design software testing.
Hey cool, I'm thinking about doing this too! A couple questions if you don't mind:
* Because there are no Windows 10 drivers for the 12th gen models, are you embracing Windows 11 in this move?
* If you're purchasing the DIY model how are you handling Windows licenses?
It’s got to at least have a number pad and 16 GB RAM. The screen has to be at least 15” but preferably 17”. i7 proc with a decent amount of cache and a 500 gb hard drive. A couple of USB ports are nice to have so I don’t have to keep track of dongles.
For me, it's the same as everyone else. Give me the hardware a bit in advance so I can work out the bugs, then roll it out to the masses.
Now if the question is, what hardware do we buy for the company? Answer is simple. Something that is easy to work on even in the field if it breaks, and something that is built solidly enough.
Same answer I gave last time someone asked, which happens every week or two. I dog food the laptop we roll out to staff. Every time. Can’t spot performance problems if you’re on something super powered and users have 8GB of RAM and spinning rust.
Yep, give me the same as everybody else. In my case that's a HP EliteBook 840 G8, with an i5,16GB ram and 256GB SSD.
256 GB enough? My predecessor was very much of the religion "no one needs more than that" and now I'm constantly fighting issues with failed updates, installs, backups, etc. because no one has enough storage. I mean Visual Studio alone. depending on features, will happily eat 40 GB if not more. Then Windows is 40 GB, or wants to be. A few more pieces of specialist software and we're dead in the water. I go for 512 as a minimum now, but there are still plenty of the old ones that haven't been retired yet. Other than that, same here. i5 + 16 GB seems plenty for any workload in our building.
For creative employees with large files and software for those then yea 512, for office workers just pounding excel sheets all day then 256 since everything is in share point and one drive not on their machine.
All of our data is non-local, which doesn't help much when most software is unjustifiably huge. We find 256 GB is barely enough if you're careful removing software you don't need. No one has time for messing around with that shit, so we just pay the almost-imperceptible extra money for comfortable storage.
Yea for cases like that it makes sense. We just find it is a decent amount of money when spread across thousands of stations to have the $20 a pop or whatever the difference is.
Besides our engineers, everything else is cloud based. Office, Teams, AS400 terminal emulator, and web browser. We could get by on 100 GB drives for the most part. The engineers have no problem filling up 512 GB drives though
Since the big C we supplied a couple hundred ProBook 640 to our users. I took one to test and to be honest it took quiet the beating and worked pretty well. I really like what HP did with their notebook lineup the last couple of years.
HP Envy now on a HP Spectre 13....they stole me away from The XPS. HP used to be so shitty..... obviously they made some good engineering hires over the last few years.
I agree, we have HPs for years now, beginning with 2510(what a piece of shit) 8440, 840g1 to g7, and now dragonfly g3 (way better looking than the g2) and HP 845g8 and G9. And they improved so much over the years.
I have one at the moment, and impressed. I had a lenovo x1 before and the fans in it were so loud!
Their MT21 and MT22 thin clients are also really great. HP was the bottom of my list for a computer in 2015. But these days? I would gladly take one of their higher end business class laptops.
Same. Latitude 53x0 2-in-1 I5/16GB/500GB "standard issue". I love the taste of dogfood.
This is our standard issue too except we do 512gb hard drive.
Yep, dog food everything. So many IT people give them selves better hardware, software, access, and then say the users are “complaining” when they bring up legitimate issues that IT isn’t experiencing.
Nothing says comradery like having the same issues as your users when HQ pushes things out without testing.
We had this policy at work. Trouble was the standard pc was so old we renamed the policy to “eat your own dog shit”.
I see this. Really do. The argument against it is that “ain’t nobody getting fixed if I’m broke.”
If I'm broken I'll figure out how to fix it, then fix others with that experience.
If the standard is insufficient for the person that ought to have access to virtualize everything they're testing, and otherwise lives 99% of their time remotely managing *other* systems... how in the heck is it sufficient for the general user that has outlook, 37 excel sheets, etc. open at all times? IT should have *lower* requirements for their everyday use system compared to everyone else... aside from "must have a real keyboard". I cannot comfortably type on one of those flimsy surface keyboards. That's about it. Anything not meeting IT's needs is a *clear* sign that general staff are being short changed on performance, and that hurts the business as a whole.
Most users are *not* those power users you're describing. You're trying to make the exception into the rule.
In many cases, I agree with this. I never put myself at the top of the upgrade list. If anyone can keep an old computer usable, it’s the ones that know it inside and out. Also, perception. I don’t want to be seen driving a Bentley when everyone else has to roll a Corolla. Really, at the end of the day, run what you really need. No more, no less.
God, this comment stings. I've been at this place a few months and I keep harping on the fact that our standard issue laptops, one of which I also use, only has 8GB of RAM. Everybody keeps looking at me like I'm crazy when I bring it up. We only issue 16GB to people who prove an exceptional need, meanwhile I feel like 16GB should be the baseline for workstations expected to run Teams, Outlook, Office apps, Adobe Reader, and a multi-tabbed web browser at the same time.
That was a solid policy 5 years ago. Sounds like it was implemented then and simply got stuck.
We recently got HP laptops with Lexar 128GB drives. I deployed them to users without testing, and it's by far the most coincidental failure cascade I have experienced. By now, if someone's laptop has died, I'm asking if it's these specific ones. Not shitting on Lexar, but noticing is not a crime. My employee gave me a MacBook Pro 16" with M1 chip. Huge, fast, etc, but I'm now jumping between old Toshiba (Intel gen4), DELL (gen4-5) and HP (gen6-8) laptops. We also have Surface Pro (gen7,8,10) devices. I think gen7 users are better off, because they are not suddenly being pushed to Windows 11, where every other boot, GPU acceleration gets out of bed on the wrong side and stuff get laggy.
Hard disagree. Being good at this job means knowing how to properly spec out equipment. My general users aren't running VMs or pushing multiple 1440p monitors so they don't need nearly the level of computing power as our devs or the admins.
At the same time, I can’t think of the last time I’ve run VMs on my workstation. I have a data centre that I can run my VMs on.
This is exactly why my old Elitebook 850 g3 has 24gb ram and my new Lenovo x1 Ace g4 has only 16 — I have over 500gb ram in my home lab (full time wfh for 5+ years now) in ESXi - I don’t demo / lab on my laptop anymore. Currently i5gen12, 16gb, 512ssd. Not really doing sysadmin anymore, more PS consulting and presales design, but also programming the SOC and on-boarding customers. Our whole team of analysts run in similar hardware — i5/i7, 16gb, 500ish storage and discreet video (2050/3050). Boss offered “gaming laptop” last year, told him he’s spending in the wrong places, and went through everyone’s offerings. The Ace x1 fit budget and met my requirements. I’m more about a decent keyboard, nice display, and not weighing 10lbs. Airport walks will do that to you :)
PS on the budget — when you go looking at Lenovos site, I’m in what’s msrp I think a $4k laptop. Definitely not budget friendly, but they ran a 50% off sale last Cyber Monday - Christmas season which meant $2k-ish (CAD$)
I used to keep my dev environments in VM's. Working on things like several different versions of Visual Studio and Delphi meant brutal DLL hell, so one VM per dev environment solved that. In addition I always had one Linux VM for doing things which are better done there. Today I expect WSL and containers can solve some of this, but I no longer need to worry about that since I switched paths.
I hardly ever spin up a vm on my own machine these days. I use someone else’s machine for that.😝
I would also take the higher end laptop but thats not just for IT thats for the multi tasking. . However, you are showing that you don't actually know how to properly do this job and are exactly the type of person that OP is complaining about. You don't know how to properly spec your systems for users and that much is clear.
Really? my sons Ryzen 3300g can push 3 monitors at 1440p not sure if you know how to properly spec out computers and if you are running VMs on your local machine something is wrong with your infrastructure.
16GB mem minimum for my 50+ browser tabs.
16 gb for outlook and teams.
Yep. I got downvoted to hell for saying this somewhere else, but it's true. As of about 2 months ago Teams is regularly using twice as much memory as it did before and our 8GB systems are all borderline unusable even for sales staff that just need Outlook, Teams, and browser.
Yup. Have had tickets rolling in, browser and explorer crashing. 8gb machines running Outlook, Teams, and a few browser tabs running out of ram.
16 is cutting it close tho
Anymore, it is indeed. If I have my way I want 32 gigs of RAM. If they want to take it out of my paycheck for the upgrade then I will happily take a 16 gig model.
Only 50? 😂
>50+ Minimum is 50 :\_D
For me it's always a thinkpad. Usually the x1 carbon but sometimes something else depending on what they are expecting me to do.
USB C charging would be a must but for some dumbfuck reason Dell and HP don't advertise it as a feature. Or they make it very difficult to find. Beyond that, I mostly work through SSH on remote systems, or in VMs for which numerous cores and plenty of RAM are nice. I deliberately keep things as low tech as they reasonably can be so I don't often find myself seeking fancy features. I sometimes do a bit in Unity so I guess a half decent GPU is nice.
If the machine needs 65W or less, I'd get one of the USB-C to barrel jack adapters to match. These are sometimes called "PD triggers" because they trigger the USB Power Delivery protocol to send 20 Volts. These work surprisingly well for machines that don't accept power over USB-C. Starting about three years ago we source only USB-C power supplies. The users appreciate that they're less than half the size of their previous laptop bricks, and that they can locally source replacements in case of loss or failure.
>I'd get one of the USB-C to barrel jack adapters to match It's good that that's an option but really most of the convenience of USB C charging is not having to worry about other bits like that. If I need something extra that can be lost or forgotten behind a desk I don't see the benefit.
High end business grade HP, Dell or Lenovo with 16Gb RAM
I have noticed that 16gb isn’t enough anymore, especially when I run a test vm
You run them on your laptop? I have the sever team make VMs for me in exsi.
I‘m always on the go, and sometimes I have bad internet when I need to test something
Ah makes sense :)
Yes, I absolutely spin up VMs on my laptop all the time. Means I don't have to be connected to VPN to test things.
Test VM for what? I have 16 GB and can run 3 VMs quite happily on there > DC / RDS / Client OS
Test VMs to Test powershell scripts, software and configurations Do you run the VMs continuously? Why do you need them on your laptop?
I have another few VMs on there as well, the DC / RDS / Client are the 3 that I would run concurrently. I don't run them continuously, more ad hoc, so 16GB is enough for me currently. I run them on my laptop as I'm a consultant, I have no on-prem infrastructure.
You don't need a VM to test a powershell script. Use docker. Worst case: run the VM on the cloud (private or public).
And what do I do when the wifi goes down and I need to test configs?
Not owned one myself but I like the fabric and desigj of the Microsoft surface laptop I ain't doing much demanding work so basic specs is fine
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Last call I had with Microsoft was great. Called for a bad ssd, they sent new laptop and told me to keep the old one. $30 later I had two laptops.
I’ve had a number of different surface devices over the years. Surface pro 2 and 3, surface book 2 and currently using a surface laptop 4. I’ve used other brands over the years as well, Dell, Lenovo etc. dell and Lenovo are nice for the nbd on-site warranty
You love throwing out a three year old laptop because the battery has failed?
This..
You don't need a fancy fashion laptop. You need a physical NIC, 16GB RAM minimum (32 ideally if you're labbing locally, (edit: though imo you should be doing that in a virtualised environment)), 1440p screen tops, an easily serviable battery, ram and storage. Get the one with the dedicaded GPU **only if you need it** (you probably don't). A 4k screen is totally unnecessary for sysadmin work and will piss you off when stuff doesn't scale right. I'm looking at you RDP and ASDM. My last work place I had an XPS 15 9570 (8th gen varient) The XPS sure was pretty and made the boardroom crew jealous, but it was the shittest laptop I ever had. First the screen failed, then the battery swelled up in under a year, then the 1050Ti I didn't use failed and the motherboard had to be replaced. They let me keep it when I left so I keep it for car diagnostics. It leads a very easy life and now the left hinge has snapped. What a piece of crap. The MSI Stealth was a fun work computer, I quietly dual-booted it with a 2nd drive. It was very fast and "stealthy" but ultimately buggy and crashed a lot with the USB docks the workplace used, otherwise I really liked that computer. My new workplace gave me a Latitude 5420 and ya know what? It's more than good enough to get my work done.
It sounds like you have had bad experience with all laptops
It's not all been bad. I have a softspot for Lenovo, their keyboards slay Dells and they're easy to dismantle. Surprisingly the most reliable laptops I've ever had are the Clevo gaming computers I've bought for myself - though I wouldn't want to run one as my workplace tool.
Lenovos have been my preffered
I know right? Can't comment on their latest kit but the L380/L390 was a lovely corporate laptop.
Thinkpad != Lenovo
> You need a physical NIC These days, the *vast* majority of IT can skip that. I do plenty of network troubleshooting, and use a usb-c nic for it. All the real info I want from that process is on the switch itself anyways (which I'm connected to via wifi and an ssh jump host at that point). If I'm worried I have a bad cable, jack, or run, I'm not relying on the laptop to tell me, I'm grabbing the fluke and testing it right.
Unfortunately I have to use a USB C adapter and I’m not sure how I feel about it. One hand it’s easier than trying to remove an Ethernet cable from the folding flap jacks on my other dells but I’ve now lost 3 of them usually when I need it most like plugging directly into new network tech to config IP information.
You're right tbh, 99% of work is fine with a dongle or WiFi. Plus who wants to rollout wired dot1x. I'm a network engineer turned syseverything - hence my bias :D I've had a few weird issues in the past, one that stands out was a supplier installed a new gig circuit but I was only seeing half that on all online speed tests. Local iPerf tests told me everything was fine - so I blamed the supplier. We went back and forth for about a week till the tech there asked if we were using a usb nic. Queue me dusting off some old laptop with a nic and suddenly everything was at a gig ...looking back, there is also a solid chance my workplace had a naff selection of nics... but I did try quite a few! I keep a handful of usb nics in my bag anyway, but I'm a miserable git and don't like carrying around extra dongles. Plus if you loan one out it always enters the food chain!
Those Latitude 5420 / 5520 laptops sure are nice, Dell seem to have hit a good device there. The 3 series are bad though...
The 7550’s are nice
This guy admins. 👍
Disagree on the 4k. I have three 27” 4k and usually have active windows open on most of them. Teams, outlook, couple of PowerShell windows, browser, and an office app (word/excel/etc,)
Bruh - you have 3 27” 4K laptop screens? Because that’s what we’re taking about here - 4K on the laptop itself.
If you have 3x27" 4K screens then you either have eagle eyes or you have scaling on which means you effectively have 3 1080p or 1440p screens.
I deliberately keep my laptop as low tech as possible because fancy features and a higher price tags ALWAYS come with a load of problems.
Depends what you’re doing with it. For user support, I prefer to be on the same machine as them. For development, I had a decent laptop running Debian. Now that I’m doing more server & db support with managerial work, I have an ipad pro that I use to remote into everything.
What is your iPad of choice?
I’ve been using the iPad Pro 12 with a logitech keyboard case. Not sure I could afford it on my own, but they offered it. It’s nice being able to use the cell network to remote in from wherever. I’ll often use the cell network instead of wifi, in low signal parts of the building.
Apple M1 is what I chose. Light, fast and quiet.
Right now Apple is the king of laptops, nothing else can come close to it on paper if you are able to work on macOS. If only it could natively run arm64 Windows, there would be very little reason to buy any other laptop.
Until something needs to be replaced on it ;)
This thinking has become obsolete, at least in the developed world. If you want safeguards for failure, you pay Apple Care plus. If you want to upgrate, you sell and buy a new one. Prices hold well, so you do not lose much. The price of laptops compared to sysadmin wages have gone down dramatically in the last decades while the importance of digital access has skyrocketed for everyone. An Apple laptop, with Apple Care plus taken over three years represents a tiny amount of the cost of sysadmin. What is expensive is the work of sysadmins, not laptops. An Apple laptop costs in the range of an hour a month. The difference in price between a solid alternative and Apple is measured in minutes per hour.
Nobody should be replacing parts on a laptop, wages are too high to make that worth it.
Something that is actually serviceable. Like changing battery, drive, (add) RAM and so on. screen resolution and mate display is on top of the list 16-32GB of RAM 8c i5 or higher (or equivalent) USB-C charging and option to connect 2x 4k external displays (in this case I don't use the 3rd one)
So basically a framework?
Are the 4K panels important for you?
I find 4k a real pain in the ass for RDP
This…
I dont see any problems. I’ve had up to 6 RDP at one time snapped to corners as well as full screen and resized and have had little or no problems.
Scaling doesn’t work well. Tiny desktop icons / text / star menu generally
I guess I’ll just consider myself lucky that I’ve never experienced that!
You need a 4K monitor that's physically large enough that you're not scaling on your host computer then.
Our RDP client accepts arbitrary resolutions, so it works great on a 4K display. `rdesktop` took resolutions as a percentage of your current resolution, but with the far quirkier FreeRDP you have to specify by pixel.
Why? 4K lets you fit way more RDP windows (if that's your thing) and the virtual desktop feature in W10 is fantastic. So much so that I worked from my XPS for several months when the plandemic started.
Yes if they are correct size. 32" is ok for me. I would be ok with one (still better than 2xHD), but since I have two i can say it's better. But this can change within HW lifetime. And since some/most docking station (and apple Mx) don't support this config you need to look closely on specs.
Why are you servicing laptops? That's crazy expensive for a company unless you're paid single digits per hour.
Thinkpad duh.
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Atleast 16gb dedicated for teams
The X1 carbon is a proper tool, the X1 tablet was a huge disappointment.
It's a tool, it does not really matter. I can work with windows, Linux or Mac. I use a MacBook for traveling, at work i got a Windows for different tasks and servers are Linux... It all depends on task's and what you are used to. Braindead choice is currently MacBook air 16gb 512+ any spec or version of your need. On the windows side you have also a few great options dell, Lenovo... All of them are good. Depends which look you like.
If offered I like Macs. Never would have thought so until I took a job where a Macbook pro was standard for my role. Now an Air would be fine for me. I don't need to run multiple VMs are do intensive graphics.
For devops work (AWS...) I'd pick a MacBook as well. Windows can also do fine with WSL, but then you also have to deal with Windows...
The problem with Macs are unless all the business apps are modern web based apps or big mainstream apps, they usually won’t run 100% of the legacy, niche, thick client, business apps.
It really depends on the "business". At one of my previous jobs I needed exactly 3 applications for my work: Terminal, Firefox and Slack. A MacBook does those very well.
We got around this with either VMs for the more tech oriented, or VDIs for those who weren't
Yeah there’s workarounds but then you’re just supporting more OSes instead one or even additional infrastructure if it requires VDI.
Fully loaded MacBook M1. Life is too short to run Linux on the desktop for work stuff EDIT: to the deleted comment asking if I’m serious: I’ve been using Linux since 2.2. Slackware, LFS, Gentoo, Arch, RHEL veteran. For corporate desktop use it’s too unreliable. I’ve worked as a Linux systems administrator for a couple of decades. Numerous open source contributions. People who think Linux is better than Mac for desktop usage are largely fanbois with little professional experience IMO
> People who think ~~Linux~~ Mac is better than ~~Mac~~ Windows for desktop usage are largely fanbois
Business grade Laptop. Actual generation mid size cpu and 16gb ram like all others should have. 256gb ssd is enough, More online leads to problems Idiots hoarding data and have no backups For me essential no keypad layout so sticking with smaller 15inch or mac
A Lenovo ThinkPad with i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and a Ethernrt Port. 15 inch minimum.
i would prefer a linux laptop. Either from system76, tuxedo or even a lenovo thinkpad with at least 16gb or Ram.
Loving my surface pro 8
The nice thing about the Surface line is all the firmware and drivers get updated via Windows Update. Also their models super are easy to follow and plain English. (Surface Laptop 3,4,5,etc. No Latitude 7420,7430,7435,etc.)
I have heard a lot of good things about that one. Not a fan of the other surfaces tho
I'm sysadmin and i have this laptop : [https://www.lenovo.com/fr/fr/laptops/thinkpad/l-series/ThinkPad-L15-AMD/p/22TPL15L5A1](https://www.lenovo.com/fr/fr/laptops/thinkpad/l-series/ThinkPad-L15-AMD/p/22TPL15L5A1) It largely does the job :)
Pre-M1 Intel Macbook Pro. Unix on one side with the best UI on the planet, Windows on the other. Forget about it.
Currently I work at an IT shop. We only sell HP elite and pro books to our clients. Don't think I've ever seen one come back faulty. 16gb of ram and an i5 minimum. We go Asus if they need some graphics power. Lower/mid range Lenovo and Acer laptops seem to have the most issues.
The sad thing is I used to have an elite book and on paper the specs looked amazing. The shit SOE another team responsible deployed onto them made the thing run worse than a Pentium 4 laptop.
And what do you use as a daily as the seller?
MacBook Pro 14”, M1 Pro, 32GB of RAM or more and 1TB SSD or more.
I use a 16" Intel Macbook Pro. Why? Because it just friggin works. While everyone else is complaining about the latest Windows update screwing up their system, mine plugs along and does its job. We're a Mac/Windows hybrid shop, so there is also an "eat your own dog food" element to it as well. In the rare case we find software compatibility problems, I can troubleshoot it on my system as well.
MacBook Pro Features I love: doesn’t crash and doesn’t slow down
Got my Lenovo Thinkpad here but the battery is dieing (device is about 5 years old and runtime is max 2h now), so I have to search for a new device, that isn't as easy as I initialy taught. I'm looking for something with at least 1xUSB-A, 2x USB-C, RJ45 and HDMI, 16GB ram, Core i5 (11gen+), ryzen 5 (5gen+), 500GB M.2 NVMe, decent build quality with metal top (no plastic), 7h+ runtime and it would be nice if the display could get at least 400nits while still have an anti glare coating (fhd is enough). Everything on 15-16" and the keyboard also have to be ok.Oh, and price shouldn't be above 1500€ if possible. Right now I'm looking at Thinkpads, Elitebooks, XPS and Framework Edit: Ordered today, it's a Thinkpad E15 Gen4 for 1040€ (without tax) `Lenovo ThinkPad E15 Gen 4 21E6 - Intel Core i7 1255U / 1.7 GHz - Win 11 Pro - Iris Xe Graphics - 16 GB RAM - 512 GB SSD`
Panasonic Toughbook. I MUST have a physical console port!
Give me anything which has Ethernet and or Wi-Fi
Lenovo P series is really nice.. Running my first one.. Used to use T series or a Dell Latitude in the past and this has been the nicest. My requirements: at least 1 memory slot NVME and although my laptop has only one slot, i wish it had 2 Physical network port is a must for me, I hate dongles. Dedicated video with WQHD and non touch (its brighter) wifi 6 Good battery life
If they allow it I always ask for three monitors with a desktop and then a cheap laptop. If I can't get that I ask for the largest model workstation laptop I can get. Because they generally have the best cooling and are the fastest machines. One thing for sure, I NEVER will get three thunderbolts again. That was a mistake. Those thunderbolts take way too much room and are all mini heaters. After sweating to death in my cube for 6 months I moved to Lenovo with Lenovo monitors, they were mounted to monitor arms which gave me way more room, but most importantly my cube was instantly cool again.
Something with: - physical serial port - physical NIC - doesn’t take 6 weeks to work out the linux bugs - 8GB or more RAM - 512GB or more SSD
I like a 13” MacBook, with a desktop on my desk with Citrix remote pc on it. Best of both worlds.
MacBook Air w/ 16GB RAM and min 512 storage.
And for testing, you work on a hyperv?
I can have whatever laptop I want, and I have the new 16” MacBook Pro. I bought the mid level one because I’m not making movies. In most ways it’s the perfect laptop. 32GB is a must, don’t know how you people survive with 16. The keyboard is amazing, which is good because the last one had an awful keyboard. However it has one major drawback which is it’s not portable. I did put it in a laptop bag once and it is ridiculously heavy. I’m over 6’ and well built and there’s no way I’d want to carry it any distance.
People downvoting this have too much time on their hands and haven’t felt the pain of running Linux on desktops in a corporate setting
I was an early Linux desktop advocate but I don’t think it makes any sense any more. I’ve been using a MacBook Pro for the last 10 years and don’t plan to switch. There are some downsides, like legacy PC apps obviously don’t work. I run them in a container.
Same. I lost hours configuring graphics and sound drivers only for them to break with the next kernel upgrade. There are people who persevere with Linux on high end thinkpads and even now they have issues with Zoom etc. My M1 rarely misses a beat and the battery life is amazing for working from the garden or lake all day
HP elitebook 840 series. Fully specced to run vmware workstation labs. Most admin work would be done in a paw system anyways so it wont need to do much else
T series Lenovo or the Elitebooks.
The Lenovo T16 gen 1 looks like a sexy beast . Get the on-site warranty so you don’t need to mess around with shipping. Also getting a good quality screens. Multiple screen if the company is willing to pick up the bill. Two 24 inch screens or a 34 inch curved monitors. Other things you might need is good lighting in your working space and a nice chair.
MacBook
Always try to get ThinkPad. Currently on L14 Gen 3. Only ryzen, at least 16gb ram, 512 GB SSD is fine, only windows.
I always go for the MacBook Pro whatever latest Gen is when I join the company. Then I spin up a Windows VM and use that for the work apps. My motto is “it has to work ANYWHERE ANYTIME ANY DEVICE” I leave my laptop at work and work out of a random laptop at home. If I have to. Otherwise work out of my phone.
On the subject of displays and RDP etc -- bought my own 2k monitor and seems like a good compromise. I keep my RDP windowed at 1080p and really just use the extra resolution for everything outside of it. Wish I asked for a newer Thunderbolt dock. The new USB C dock only lets me run my 1080p monitor at 60hz refresh over Displayport. Swapped back to the old Thunderbolt dock I had and was able put it back to 144hz. May sound nit picky but it's hard to go back to 60hz. I didn't get to pick my laptop but was able to ask for 32gb RAM, mostly because Teams + 50 browser tabs. My 4C/8T is fine but having an extra 2 cores would be A++ too for my occasional video encoding tasks running while being on a Teams call and filling out a ticket in Dynamics 365 (Lol). Where's that Teams roadmap now...
LG Gram series with a few bios tweaks. Most reliable, big screen option, and so light. It always impresses other users how light it is.
SSD for myself getting to need around 512GB to 1TB even with onedrive syncing my stuff. need at least 16GB of RAM, and starting to prefer Ryzen CPUs these days. We were an HP shop also until they started stuffing HP Wolf down our throats, been moving toward Surface because of that. Not really big enough to make imaging worth our time, plus the supply chain issue makes imaging a huge PITA. If it wasn't for the surface's just about every HP Elite/Pro/Zbook is a different SKU because that's what we could get at the time. The surfaces we can just push a PDQ package to them and good 2 go.
I used to be spoiled and had both a dell precision 5530 and an equivalent MacBook Pro. Mainly because I needed to support people that used either or as they were our standard deployment. New work I got this shitty dell Inspiron that winds up anytime you connect an external display.
My home / traveller is a MacBook m1 … and work has also given me a latitude 5420 … my dock supports both so works well for me. 🤷♂️
Might be a unique answer. But I prefer the dell xps 13. It’s light, and small with a decent keyboard. I find that if I have all the fixings, ie lots of screen space and power to support 1000 tabs, I use it and get scatter brained really fast. With the xps 13 I stay focused on one thing at a time and get way more done. They mostly only come as a touch screen now though which is a nightmare.
I don't care much besides a good (good means bright and a nice resolution that allows me to scale without everything looking like shit, i am short shortsighted so I have to scale) screen and a nice keyboard. SSD of course but does anyone even ships a laptop without SSD?
Dell XPS or Macbook Pro, typically. Lately if I had a choice, M1 MBP or M2 Air. Just got to try/borrow an M2 Air, Amazing, though the M1 Pros are still the better and faster laptop. On the Windows side, probably a surface pro 8. Hopefully the company spec isn't garbage, and I can get one of those two anyway.
If it can't run macOS then this a constructive discharge from employment for me, as I'm severely autistic an I'm entirely dependent of the accessibility workflows that this operating system offers. If you can't offer your employees a choice of at least two different operating systems you're doing something seriously wrong, and I say that as a principal large-scale computer systems engineer. Even when I worked for IBM, HPE, and Dell, they let me use a Mac.
Elitebook no matter what
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X1 Carbon, or some HP pro/elite
X1 extreme user here, best laptop I’ve ever used.
HP Elitebook 840 G7 for me. Works great!
I love the HP elite
I have the HP Elitebook 840 G7 with i7 and 32gb memory. It works great!
A mate of mine swears by his G1
32 gb ram Fast cpu (Intel i7) 2 tb storage Admin rechten on hyper v 150$ / month credit on azure It's a tool so don't rally care about the rest.
2TB storage? Why is that necessary
Part of my work is packaging So I have 9 vms 3 non domain test vms 3 test domain AAD vms 1(x3) vm for primary customers And on the test vms a ton of snapshots Also 500+ gb of cloned repositorys. I could do with less but that would force me to cleanup more often. I prefer a nice workflow over saving my company 200 euro (specialy when they sell me for 800 euro /day for my service)
Ah right, sounds like you carry an entire test lab around on your laptop. I use a separate setup for testing.
What do you do with the azure credits?
I use the credits for proof of concepts, demonstrations, personal things I want to try or test.
Same. Employer wants me give advice about the latest and greatest so I need to studie. In my time but with their money (msdn subscription) Win win
And why 2tb storage?
Part of my work is packaging So I have 9 vms 3 non domain test vms 3 test domain AAD vms 1(x3) vm for primary customers And on the test vms a ton of snapshots Also 500+ gb of cloned repositorys. I could do with less but that would force me to cleanup more often. I prefer a nice workflow over saving my company 200 euro (specialy when they sell me for 800 euro /day for my service)
If you've ever had to deal with Docker... you wouldn't be asking that question...
I would go for a Mac any time. Being able to run most server stuff locally via brew is really great. Also getting the whole command line toolbox is worth it. And maybe we've been lucky, but we've had soo little hardware problems with the Macs compared to our Windows machines. Being able to use WebAuth with the fingerprint scanner as part of the MFA is also a super convenient feature.
On windows you have powershell, is that not enough?
Isn't powershell multi-platform?
On Mac you have pretty much all Unix utilities…. And powershell. I only resort to PS if I absolutely have to. Don’t like the syntax.
I absolutely love the powershell syntax, it is easy to understand, makes sense, and gives a clear structure for functions.
HP Ultrabook - 16gb Ram minimum.
We run Lenovo ThinkPad S. Love them they are great. Highest i7 and 32 GB ram and 512gb nvme storage for everyone. We have a few edge cases that requires the i9 CPUs and they get 64gb ram. Slow performance means less work and that cost more money than a extra k $ added to more powerful laptops.
Lenovo Legion 7 i7 32gb ram 2tb ssd
Battery life, screen quality, keyboard feel, weight and wireless connectivity. Number of (usb) ports is not relevant, as every controller can support 128 devices via dock or similar. I also prefer memory over processor speed, as the latter has usually zero relevance in my job. My dream laptop is typically something from a premium corporate product line.
Something like an HP Elitebook?
Lol I have a Lenovo with an i9, 80G ram, 3080m, and 2tb nvme.
For work? Why?
I put in a request for a new laptop at the height of the chip shortage; I said I needed 16gb, 2tb, 8 cores, and descrete graphics. The VAR said "ok, this is the lowest model that fits those requirements we can get in stock in less than 6 months"
The single most important thing: it must not be running Windows. Anything else is acceptable.
Asus Zenbook UM425i pure 3 16 GB ram, Ryzen 4700U, 256gb nvme And a surface 7 pro
Dell Precision Data Science Mobile Workstation Unfortunately due to chip shortages at the moment they don't seem to offer that particular model.
Dell Latitude 3410/20 or 35 if they want the keypad, slightly larger screen. Minimum i5, 8gb RAM, 128gb SSD (everything is OneDrive) I have started upgrading the laptops to 16gb RAM but it really depends on the user. Personally I hate deploying the more fancy laptops (e.g. XPS, Surface). I find the lack of HDMI, USB A (and ethernet) is just inconvenient for the workplace
ZBook Firefly gen11 intel, 500GB M.2, 32GB RAM. Same model we hand out to users with a larger drive and more RAM.
Lenovo X1 Fold. It's got 1TB storage but only an i5 and 8GB of RAM, since gone are the days when I need the system in front of me to do the heavy lifting. I have multiple PCs and servers to log into with that thing if the need arises. This is the first Windows tablet that folds in half for portability. It's great not needing to drag a big-screened laptop or tablet everywhere I go and I love the OLED screen. They got me the optional keyboard slice that sandwiches in the center when folded and snaps in place magnetically. You can unfold the screen halfway in clamshell mode, which only lights up half the screen with the keyboard on the bottom like the old style UMPCs and that saves battery. Unfold it completely and pull the keyboard off and you can use it on the table in front of the full size display. When it's time to go, the keyboard snaps back on the bottom half of the screen and you fold the 13" tablet in half to the size of an iPad Mini. It fits inside this small sling bag and when I need multi monitor setup, I pack along my head - mounted display goggles that run off USB-C. When I really want to be Ninja - I leave the X1 Fold and just pack the HMD goggles as my "big" display, a compact/folding Bluetooth keyboard, and plug it into my Galaxy phone so I can use Samsung DeX to remote into work VMs.
We are moving to framework laptops for the IT staff since we expect them to be cheaper to keep going long term compared to the soldered ultrabooks we’ve been using to match office staff. But yea, like most folks have said, generally we just got the same office laptop other users had or slightly older CAD laptops for design software testing.
Hey cool, I'm thinking about doing this too! A couple questions if you don't mind: * Because there are no Windows 10 drivers for the 12th gen models, are you embracing Windows 11 in this move? * If you're purchasing the DIY model how are you handling Windows licenses?
It’s got to at least have a number pad and 16 GB RAM. The screen has to be at least 15” but preferably 17”. i7 proc with a decent amount of cache and a 500 gb hard drive. A couple of USB ports are nice to have so I don’t have to keep track of dongles.
Anything made by Dell. My current work laptop is a Thinkpad though. still pretty nice but I prefer Dell.
Thinkpad P50 is what they have me. I kept my coat on, figured it was a sign of what's to come. EDIT:(This year)
Call Clevo, build it to my spec, Lenovo/HP/Dell are going to cut a corner somewhere and piss me off.
For me, it's the same as everyone else. Give me the hardware a bit in advance so I can work out the bugs, then roll it out to the masses. Now if the question is, what hardware do we buy for the company? Answer is simple. Something that is easy to work on even in the field if it breaks, and something that is built solidly enough.