Thanks a lot Arnaud for the followup!
And congrats — enjoy your new laptop. 🙂
(I’ll also add your recommendation to the article!)
Cheers,
Tomi

Hi again,
Just popping back to update you on my final decision.
I finally gave in to my gamer heart and went with the Razer Blade Stealth given the fact that for less money I got double the storage and a GPU option compared to the Surface Laptop. I do know that it is quite an over-the-top Laptop but I must say that I’m really happy with it. Moreover, the extra storage space and GPU let me install my gaming library and play them. Furthermore, as I am remote working for over a year now, I also invested in the Dell U2421E external monitor which gives me a 16:10 aspect ratio and a USB-C connection for power (90 Watt) and Display output as well as a USB Hub (3 USB-A + 1 USB-C).
This set-up gives me the comfort of a full 24.1-inch screen and ergonomic desktop working station in a one-cable connection and the flexibility to take my laptop and work from the couch (or a coffee shop in the future).
I must say that I’m pleasantly surprised by the battery life of the Razer Blade Stealth and can confirm that it holds comfortably 8h of light work.
All in all I really happy with this set-up but I do believe that there are less expensive set-ups that would work as well as this one.

But that’s an awesome comment, I wish I could pin it to top!
Thanks for adding your thoughts!

Tomi

The 15” has a dedicated GPU, i7 Quad Core, and large SSD and RAM options. The 2013-2015 13” is more portable which is a huge plus but to the disadvantage of a dual core i5 and no dedicated GPU, but not all data people need that extra power.

Otherwise, I’d just get any used suitably spec’d business class laptop: Lenovo ThinkPads (T, X, maybe L or even E series too) or Dell Latitudes, Precisions, or XPSes. HP Elitebooks and Probooks would get you the best specs for the money but are less supported on GNU/Linux. A $300 budget is enough for any of these brands. $500 is more than enough on a budget.

This doesn’t have to be that expensive. I got lucky and got a 15” Retina MacBook Pro 2013 with maxed out specs for $200 on FB Marketplace. I just kept my eye out on OfferUp, Craigslist, and eBay too.. eBay is your best bet to find one.

Heh, now I’ve written my own mini guide!

Yep, the Macbook Air will do the job (especially the 2019 one).
I mean it depends on the software your university will require. (As you see in the article, I prefer to run everything in the cloud, so my computer doesn’t need to be a power machine.)

Either way, I would consider buying an older MacBook Pro model (even a used one) — I just bought a mid-2014 Macbook Pro recently and it works perfectly for my data science project. I actually replaced my 2018 Macbook Pro with it because the keyboard of the new Macs sucks… There’s no project I couldn’t done on the 2014 MacBook Pro so far.

Tomi

Cheers!

hey José,

the Macbook Air 2017 will be just fine! 🙂

Tomi

So now im trying to put myself up to date. Your articule helped me a lot as Im looking for a new laptop for my postgrads studies. I know you said that any single one will do the trick… how ever, is the MacBook Air 2017 good enough?(128 GB, 8 GB ram, Intel core i5). I sense that I least it is good because it one of the last or the last that still has the regular spaces for USB and such.

Thank you for your article.

Thanks, that’s a nice question!
Just going with the recommendation that I wrote in the article:
I optimize my work computer for longer battery life and not for higher performance. As I just said, most computing heavy processes will happen in the cloud and not on my local computer — so I don’t really care about high performance GPU/CPU (although I need at least a mid-level one for prototyping that does happen locally).
Hope this helps! Let us know how you decided after all!
Cheers,
Tomi