1 yr. ago • 100%

Recommendations for a new laptop?

My issue is that I need to upgrade my personal laptop. I currently have a refurbished 2020(1?) MacBook Air Intel chip and it provides about 8GB of Ram. That was all I needed when I was just coding. Now that I’m in security and love setting up multiple VMs, I realized I need a lot more horsepower. Also it overheats very quickly with just one chrome browser tab running to the point where I just use my work laptop (M2 Pro).

I saw there was the new M3 Pro and I think one of the models provides 18GB Unified memory but I think I need something like 32GB RAM bare minimum.

I want to be able to set up security onion for instance and have the ability to set up pentesting labs where I have multiple machines running at once. So that’s where non-MacBooks catch my idea but I don’t know which one to get?

Any suggestions? My budget is <= $2500-3k

7 comments

I maxed out the memory in my M2 Pro and it is glorious

2
Two things, one and I'm sorry for this one but have you tried Linux? It has way less overhead it should even be able to run on your MacBook air. Second I would recommend something more built for heavy loads. An example would be System76s powerful laptops category I would also check out TuxedoPCs laptop offerings. Also why I recommend Linux is because if you are coming from macOs it will be really familiar, also you can make so Linux works and behaves like any macOS version without big hassle. (I have a preference bias but all my hardware recommendations work with windows to. They can also be a good reference)

1
I don't really know about what you're trying to do, but have you considered a desktop/server to do the computing and using a cheaper laptop to manage it all?

1
Your laptop budget is more than I spent for my car 😂

You can get a whole lotta hypervisor server for like $500 in off lease enterprise workstation. Keep using your old MacBook to remote in.

1
- Don’t do that 😭😭😭🤣 I figured if I said a $1000 y’all would drag me. I’ll look into your idea!
  
  1
I think you first need to decide if you actually need a laptop, or if you want a desktop, or a workstation, or something else such as a rack server. Obviously, a desktop form-factor PC is easiest to build, but you wont get the new Apple M3 etc. to go with it.

You really need to first decide just how much memory and storage you want to accomodate, and then what form-factor you want it in.

1
Get a home server ... It nice to be able to blow it away with put thinking about the consequences

1

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