What Laptop Do You Use?

Just wanted to get a general idea of what pcs or laptops you guys use for your work?
Would especially love to hear from indie software devs, indie game devs, self taught coders, info sec guys, etc.
I expect to see a lot of ThinkPads in the comments, but lets see

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bigdogz

I have a Dell Precision M6800: Intel Core i7, 17" touchscreen, 32 GB RAM
I use it for general networking, Pen testing and forensics.
1 Dell Precision M6800: Intel Core i7, 17" touchscreen, 1 TB SD hard drive, 32 GB RAM for Networking (CNS, VIRL, ... etc)
2 of Dell Latitudes with 16 GB RAM for sniffing / packet tracing on physical networks.
6 Raspberry Pi's for running Kali

yoba222

XPS13 because it came with Linux from the factory instead of being stuck with Windows 10. I'll likely upgrade to a ThinkPad because the Dell is very un-upgradable. The RAM is soldered to the MOBO, and it courageously needs an adapter to do anything.
Cloud instances sometimes in AWS, but I'm cheap and usually don't want to deal with expense sheets. Raspberry Pis are surprisingly convenient for some tasks too.

SteveLavoie

My main computer is an HP Elitebook 850G4 with 16 GB and 1 TB NVME and 1 TB SSD running Windows and some VM. I have an additional laptop, an HP Elitebook 840 G6, 16 GB, 1 TB NVME, with Kali Linux installed. 1 RPi3 and 1 RPi4 with Kali for tests and pen-test.

I have access to a pool of older HPE(Gen8) server with enough compute/ram/hdd for all my test/training.

bigdogz

@yoba222

Just curious. What Linux distribution was loaded?

I had done some research on the Dell Precision and Latitude and discovered that the RAM could be upgraded. I chose to upgrade RAM and Hard disk to max which has kept the life going longer.
I actually had to reimage the Dell boxes because of bloatware. It took some time but I like my laptops running applications I want, not something I will never use.
I have various versions of Linux distros and a couple of hard drives that have only one distro to run but in most cases I can get the job done with the VM's I have running.

DFTK13

Windows 10 HP pavilion 15.6” touch screen for work/windows environment.

MacBook Air 2017 13” for school/coding/cert studies. I do have a VM with win 10 installed so I could use Boson exsim max on my MacBook without having to use 2 laptops.

yoba222

bigdogz said:

@yoba222

Just curious. What Linux distribution was loaded?

I believe it was Ubuntu 14 with the Unity desktop at the time. I ditched it for KDE, but I'm on XFCE now since I'm stuck with 8GB RAM.

yoba222

SteveLavoie said:

. . . 1 RPi3 and 1 RPi4 with Kali for tests and pen-test.

I was literally just pricing out a mini-ITX build to replace the Raspberry Pi 3 I use for some slower Kali tasks. I wonder if the 4GB of RAM on a Pi4 would get the job done at a much lower price point. Do you find the Pi4 to be a bottleneck at all for certain tasks? I mean I'm sure password cracking is off the table, but for other things how does it fare?

bigdogz

It can do the job. Just make sure you get something to mitigate the heat issues!!! You don't want to create a fire hazard. Telling some people that you let a Raspberry Pi burn, could mean that you are a bad chef! LOL

chrisone

macbook 2012 Retina 15inch. 1TB SSD, 8GB Mem, intel i7, nvidia gpu, primary OS Win Enterprise 10, VMWARE workstation for everything else. MacOS for when I reboot and forget to choose the windows 10 partition

SteveLavoie

A rpi3 is a nice implant with Kali. I made a few script so the rpi3 is calling home (SSH). However, a pi4 is running much hotter and almost require a fan.

nisti2

I use a desktop and sometimes my Lenovo Edge 2.

Dogstail

chrisone said:

macbook 2012 Retina 15inch. 1TB SSD, 8GB Mem, intel i7, nvidia gpu, primary OS Win Enterprise 10, VMWARE workstation for everything else. MacOS for when I reboot and forget to choose the windows 10 partition

How much does it cost?

MacGuffin

baghdaddy19 said:

Just wanted to get a general idea of what pcs or laptops you guys use for your work?

I prefer Apple laptops. My first a PowerBook G4, my latest a 13 inch Macbook Pro from 2017, and a couple more MacBooks in between. My tactic has been to get real nice laptops and make them last.

I've used them for general office productivity, e-mail, web surfing, and such. While at university I've used them for digital circuit design, programing in various languages, statistical analysis, loading code to prototyping boards, and as a remote terminal to big university hardware. For work they get used for web development, configuring network hardware, and other more mundane tasks. To facilitate running such varied software I use VMWare Fusion to create VMs running Windows and Linux.

I've had several "toy" laptops running Windows of various versions. I call them "toys" as I get them cheap by buying them out of surplus stock from places I've worked, or as half working "fixer uppers" from dumpster diving, and so are more for playing old games, to assist in multi-tasking (one laptop to have reference material on the screen and the other for typing up code or documentation), and to test things out on different Windows versions. The one I use fairly regularly is an Asus with a cracked screen and is therefore tethered to display and used as a desktop. I have a Dell laptop or two that still works around here somewhere, kept as spares should I need to replace a computer quickly. This stack of spares came in handy when I had two computers die at the same time from what I suspect was a power surge.

baghdaddy19 said:

I expect to see a lot of ThinkPads in the comments, but lets see

I expect to see many Apple and Dell laptops, given my own experience on what people around me prefer.

McxRisley

I just picked up an MSI Stealth GS75 with a 9th gen i7, Nvidia RTX 2070 Max-Q, 1TB SSD, 16GB Ram and 17.3 inch 144hz display the other day on black friday for.........$1400!!! Was originally $2300, then $500 off for black friday and then another $400 off just because the box was opened. I was a bit skeptical about the box being opened but figured, what the hell, if its in bad shape I'll just return it and buy a brand new one. Drove to best buy, picked it up. Turns out it wasn't even a floor model, the box had just been opened and it was sitting in the back. There were a couple of finger print smudges on the outer shell but that's it, well worth the money.

bigdogz

When Apple switched to Intel, I lost the love. They are OK, but the processors were better before they were using the Intel chipset.