TQ
dev.com
Blog about software development
19 Feb 2025 - by 'Maurits van der Schee'
I don't like laptops. They are slow, have small screens and horrible keyboards and track pads. When I have to work on them for a longer period of time my back starts to ache. Next to that they often can't be upgraded or repaired, because the storage and memory are soldered or glued onto the motherboard. And when you want to run Linux you are often disappointed by the (unsupported) exotic hardware. Nevertheless every now and then a loved one asks me to buy a laptop for them and they expect me to know which one is the best.
Although an Apple MacBook Pro M4 seems like the ultimate laptop with it's 16 inch screen, 48GB RAM and 1TB SSD it clearly is not at EUR 4749. The HP 17-cp3076nd with it's 8 core CPU maxed out with 64GB RAM and 2TB NVMe storage can be had for about 25% of that price at EUR 1143.
Subscribe 829 HP 17-cp3076nd with 8 core AMD 7730U CPU - Laptop
125 64GB 3200Mhz DDR4 2xSODIMM Corsair Vengeance - Memory
189 2TB Samsung 990 Pro - Disk drive
----+
1143 EUR total price
For a developer the Apple M4 is certainly the worse choice. It may have twice the CPU cores, but ARM is a pain when developing and testing software for deployment to your x86 powered Debian web servers. The HP laptop runs Windows 10 and Linux Mint 22.1 XFCE without a problem, allows you to disable TPM and secure boot and the laptop is easy to open for upgrades and repairs.
A complaint I've heard about the HP 17-cp3076nd is that the CPU fan can be a little noisy under load, which is true. What I didn't read is that the laptop can also be completely silent (most of the time under Linux). Note that if you want the fan to be always on, this can be set in the BIOS that is quite limited, but easy to use.
For my serious software development the HP 17-cp3076nd laptop is great. It has the high-end x86 specs I love while it is still super affordable.
NB: This post was not written on request nor sponsored in any way. I just hate to see developers buy the overpriced, barely usable, Apple MacBook Pro M4.
PS: Liked this article? Please share it on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.