laptop for programming

laptop for programming
Welcome to a laptop battery specialist of the Compaq Laptop Battery
Indeed, Apple hardware that supports dual booting with BootCamp does work impressively well (hardware is fully supported, well enough for playing video games), and Parallels VM does a good job, too, when you can get away with it. (Parallels has a few UI features that makes it all the more pleasant, compared to VirtualBox, that may or may not matter to you).
As far as display size goes ... The only mistake I made buying this Macbook Air was going with the 11" model. A friend with the same model and excellent eyesight has no problem, but me? Terrible eyesight. With that said, I'd have to suggest always going with the largest display available (both size and resolution matter). You can never have enough displays (I've got three, including the notebook, and I could easily use a fourth).
If you are just getting started with game development with battery such as Compaq 100680-001 Battery, Compaq PP2060 Battery, Compaq Presario 1400 Battery, Compaq Presario R3158 Battery, Compaq Presario 1700 Battery, Compaq Armada E500 Battery, Compaq EVO N100 battery, Compaq Evo N1020V battery, Compaq Evo N1000C battery, Compaq Evo N115 battery, even a crappy integrated Intel HD 3000 is more than likely to be more than enough for at least the first ~2 years or so (assuming 2D programming). Personally, I find CPU being my #1 desire (C++ build times, zzz). Never can have enough of that Not sure if it would matter so much with C sharp..? My little bit of experience with it says no.
It's funny you should mention the HD3000... I actually draw that as the line NOT to cross.
An HD4000 falls in the "good enough" bracket, but the HD3000 does not. It does not support GL 4 and the GL support in generally is iffy. Plus well, it's damned slow. The newer series GPUs from Intel are quite reasonable. I have a HD4600 that gets used instead of the nVIdia thanks to the general shittiness of Optimus and it still handles a decent framerate. It's also sufficient for running the likes of Blender or Unreal Engine.
My needs in laptops are slightly different than most, as my number on criteria is portability, then power, then battery, then style then finally price.
I am currently using a 2013 Razer Blade 14" and a 2013 MacBook Air.
I no longer recommend the Razer Blade however, for the same reason I dont recommend the Macbook Pro... the stupidly high resolution. The GPUs aren't powerful enough to properly power them, making things ultimately look like crap when you are forced to run in a non-native resolution. In the case of the Razer, it also killed the battery life.
My current Razer 14 gives me about 5 hours battery and is fast enough for all of my needs. The MBA has an HD4000 which works in a pinch, but isn't great for gaming by any stretch. The battery life there is more like 7 hours, although high computation tasks like compiling KICK THE CRAP out of your battery on OS/X. Way worse than on Windows for some reason.