adipurnm's web log

January 2, 2025 · 4 minutes read

My $500 developer laptop

This post is a tribute to my laptop I bought about 5 years ago, and still doing great as I write this blog post. This post is inspired by Mike Kasberg’s My $500 Developer Laptop and Max Rozen’s Replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a ThinkPad T480.

The motivation

Before the current laptop, I had a new $250 Asus E402W series. The processor was AMD E2-6110 APU with AMD Radeon R2 Graphics (4 CPUs), ~1.5GHz, with 4GB DDR3 RAM and Ubuntu MATE as its primary OS.

It was doing good for a college student’s laptop. But those specs were not enough anymore for my professional needs. So I decided to buy a new laptop.

My old laptop My old buddy

The new laptop

The laptop is Lenovo Ideapad S340-14API series, with the following specs:

I bought it offline at the local computer store when I used to work at one of the companies in Bandung. I was doubtful about buying it online because buying a laptop was a big deal at the moment. So, I had to make sure that the laptop I bought would meet my needs.

I chose this laptop because it was the most affordable laptop with the highest specs that fit my budget.

Ubuntu over Windows

I am an Ubuntu guy since I was in college. Windows is too bloated for my basic needs. And I hate the auto-update they did. Once being auto-updated, the laptop should wait for a long time to finish the update!

I’ve never experienced it from Ubuntu. Instead, they always notify the users if there are some upgradable packages, so that I, as the user, could decide whether to upgrade the packages at the time or later.

But, I might still need Windows for some specific tasks. Especially, the tasks that could only be done in Windows. So, I decided to dual boot the Ubuntu and Windows. I use Ubuntu as the main OS, so the partition size should be larger than the Windows partition.

I use Ubuntu MATE. I love it for its simplicity and low memory usage. No fancy transition animation makes it feel so snappy. The hardware drivers: Wi-Fi, webcam, Bluetooth, etc, just work out of the box, without any need to install additional drivers.

The replacements

After 2.5 years of usage, the laptop’s screen and built-in speaker were troubled. There was a straight line over my screen. I ignored that at the time, but as time went by, it became longer and finally, my laptop screen was completely broken. So, in 2022, I bought the replacement from Tokopedia for $64.

The built-in speaker produced unclear sound with noises. I haven’t fixed it yet until now. I plan to fix it along with the upper casing of the laptop.

Talking about laptop casing, my upper and lower casing laptop had already worn out. If you rub on it, it will peel off. That’s the part that I don’t like from this laptop. And that’s what happened to my upper casing.

Laptop's upper cassing Urgh…

The upgrades

Unlike Max Rozen’s, my laptop didn’t receive upgrades that much, since the laptop specs had already covered my needs. The only part I upgraded was the RAM. I added an extra 4GB RAM to the available slot.

I added the extra RAM after experiencing a sudden laptop restart several times. So annoying. I was doubtful at the time, whether to buy 4GB or 8GB of RAM. Based on the official specs, the laptop’s RAM is upgradable to 12GB, which means I was suggested to buy the 4GB RAM. Since that time I didn’t want to accept the unexpected risks, so I chose the conservative way.

It’s all good, so far. The sudden restart problem is resolved. Well, it’s not fully resolved. It still happened, but not as often as before. I also can open more apps at one time. That time I murmured: “God, I should’ve done this earlier”.

The usages

After switching to this device, I feel my productivity increased a lot. Opening apps feels fast. Booting is also fast. Writing code is more fun since the keyboard is so comfortable to use as well.

I am not a JS guy, so I haven’t tried it for a web app that uses a build tool like Vite yet. But, I think the performance would be similar to what Max Rozen said here. But for Ruby on Rails web app development, I can guarantee that this laptop would be a great fit. The tests run fast.

Conclusion

Of all the pros and cons above, overall I’m really happy with my current laptop. It helps me to do a lot of things and make money. As I write this post, the parts of the laptop still can easily be found at the local online marketplace.

I think buying this laptop is one of the best buys I’ve ever made in my life. Let’s make more money, buddy!

Laptop