What is the best and the cheapest laptop for programming

Answer 1

Bernard Ouma
You don't need the fastest and newest hardware for programming.

The main reason for extremely fast hardware are games and scientific calculations.

Personally I like the OLD (IBM/lenovo) ThinkPads. Aside of my desktop I have an X61t lenovo ThinkPad and use Notepad++ for coding (mostly HTML/CSS/Javascript).
I recommend a lenovo ThinkPad 420 or 430 with Windows 7 or Linux (Win 8 and 10 are just pain in the A$.

Answer 2

Personally, if you're not doing graphics programming, and you don't need Windows 10 (so if you're confortable with Linux/*BSD or Win 7), I'd even go as far as to say you should get the cheapest 64-bit 1080p laptop you can get your hands on (or get an old ThinkPad and a 1080p display).

Programming hasn't changed that much for a long time and even an old i3 with 2GB of RAM (4GB on Windows) should be more than enough.