Ayende @ Rahien

Marco commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 10:45:24 GMT

Recieve your macbook pro already? and what it your experience sofar? running vmware?

Tommy Skaue commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:03:58 GMT

Wow... you choosed a Mac? I guess money wasn't an issue here. It may be a bit early to give a good feedback on your experience, but how is the Mac working for you so far? Are you looking back, or are you too busy thinking about Linq for NHibernate to "feel" anything about the new hardware ? ;-)

Ayende Rahien commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:07:35 GMT

Tommy, MacBook Pro

Tommy Skaue commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:16:06 GMT

I'm curious. Did you make your choice, Ayende? I'm about to upgrade my IBM T42p and so far the Lenovo T61p seems like the best choice.

Joey Chömpff commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:39:13 GMT

I've got the Vostro 1700 with an 120 GB 7.200 rpm HDD I also got 4 GB of RAM but Vista Ultimate doesn't use the full capacity. It doesn't have an HDMI or DVI connection. And I forgot to check an bleutooth module with my order

James White commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:00:21 GMT

I bought two laptops recently with roughly the same requirements, first I got a Sager Dual 64 AMD with a huge screen. It was stupid expensive, and the only thing that made it seem less enormous was the size of the power block I had to carry. I quickly got tired of the hassle and tried the HP DV9500t with much less impressive specs and a slightly smaller screen. I'm freakin' thrilled with it though. It's the perfect size, not too heavy, fantastic screen and everything just works, and really well. All the extra bits I thought were important were just meaningless once I got the HP and it cost about half as much. So if you are considering some exotic brand/config, consider what you are willing to trade for that.

si commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 07:25:03 GMT

I've had a pro-star for the last 4 years, aside from wearing out the plastic where I rest my hands :) it has performed faultlessly. Recommended if you want plenty of grunt and have little regard for battery life http://www.pro-star.com/index.cfm?mainpage=serial-price&serial=9194&promoteid=90000275&screenid=13067101&cpuid=30094900&hdid=40095400&cdromid=20074638&ramid=80092600&batteryid=10031852&gcardid=16098300&nicwid=63092106&nicbid=66055624

Justice~! commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 01:35:20 GMT

Tom Opgenorth gets himself a Mac?? I AM THE EDMONTON TRAILBLAZER Ayende, if you're like me (a shy, retiring man who is annoyed when women try to rip his pants off) then I suggest avoiding a Mac. The hassles and harassment (most of it sexual) are just not worth it. However if you want to start a new life full of unparallelled charisma...well, you know the path to take.

MikeD commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:44:05 GMT

I have a T61p and am ording another with the WUXGA 15.4 They now offer the new Intel 9300 CPU. Do yourself a favor and reinstall the OS onto a new drive, I order a new drive HIT 7200 SATA 150 and 4 gig ram, do the swap and a fresh install. Vista finds the drivers on it's own and the machine is more reliable in my experiance. The things Lenovo installs, even after removing as much as I could, were still causing all sorts of problems including BSOD when I did a fresh install I just let Vista grab all the drivers and left it alone, working like a champ now, so I plan to do this on the new box as well. I love the Lenovo Laptops, Great keyboard, the screen could be better but is not bad, I prefer the glossy screens, just get a 24inch for the office.

Bill Pierce commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 14:53:40 GMT

I hear good things about the Lenovo X61. Small, powerful, and travels well. I know the screen is small, but you can easily attach it to a 22" widescreen. Those are cheap enough that you could get one for the office and one for the home.

Niel commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:58:37 GMT

Another vote for the Latitude D830. Build solid( can take a knock or two) and I'm developing in VM's that run faster that my previous laptop..

mark commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:16:58 GMT

I have Macbook Pro (MBP) 17" 2.4Ghz 4GB 7200RM drive purchased Dec 2007. I had my choice of laptops and read so many good things about OSX and MBP that I literally bought into the hype. It's not that fast. My tests with SuperPi proves the MBP is an average 2.4Ghz C2D computer. If you are efficient on a standard PC keyboard, the MBP keyboard SUCKS! Let me say that again, the MBP keyboard SUCKS! I cannot stand the keyboard feel nor are there dedicated keys for pgup, pgdwn, home, end and a *real* delete key. You have to use the fn key to get these keys. The one button touchpad is horrible and too big (why they use a helicopter pad on a laptop is beyond me). I'm not at all impressed with the MBP.

Gabriel Lozano-Moran commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:16:58 GMT

Right now i am using the XXODD XNi m570U notebook with is built by a Dutch company. These laptops are based on the Clevo. I believe that the already mentioned Sagernotebooks, some Alienware en other laptops also use the same Clevo machines. These are high performant excellent machines. Here is an article on Engadget for the clevo based laptops: http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/20/clevo-strikes-again-with-nvidia-8800-based-m570ru-17-inch-laptop/

Shane Bush commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 05:52:47 GMT

If you're gonna be coding on it, I'd highly recommend the MacBook Pro. The keyboard is awesome for a laptop.

Ayende Rahien commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 05:21:20 GMT

Matthew , Yes. I am running on such a machine now, you feel the difference

Sanket commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 05:16:32 GMT

Boss, East or West Toshiba is the Best.... go for that and you would fall in love with it. Highily Recommended.

Matthew Wills commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:51:45 GMT

Is it worthwhile getting 4GB of RAM? http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm

Lothan commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:32:30 GMT

I have to agree with Josh regarding the MacBook and MacBook Pro. I priced a fully loaded 17-inch MacBook Pro at more than $3,500 because Apple's upgrades are outrageous (but then some of Dell's upgrades are outrageous as well). Compare Apple's 4GB RAM upgrade at $700 to Crucial 4GB notebook RAM at $200 or so and the Hitachi 200GB 7200RPM SATA hard drive is around $200. If I was seriously looking for a notebook right now, I'd want Intel Core 2 Duo (64-bit) with 4GB RAM capabilities, SATA drive connectors, and 17-inch widescreen display. Solid-state drives sound nice on paper, but solid-state drives aren't ready for a development machine (slow write times, limited write ability, and prohibitive cost). Current notebooks that seem attractive include the MacBook Pro, Dell E1705, and Dell Vostro (but Dell doesn't offer 7200 RPM drives for the Vostro). Given the prices for upgrades, I'd buy the cheapest RAM/Drive combo possible and buy the upgrades from NewEgg.

The Other Steve commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:52:10 GMT

I run Vista 64-bit on my desktop with 4 Gigs of RAM. It was surprisingly considerably faster than the 32-bit version. Maybe this has to do with memory access, I'm not sure. The only problem I have is the intel audio driver leaks memory when I play internet radio... I have to reboot about once a week to free that up.

C-J Berg commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:09:22 GMT

I bought a new ThinkPad T61p not long ago, which I think is a perfect developer laptop: http://tinyurl.com/2ha9xd I run it with 4 GB RAM on Vista x64 (and I'll never go back to a 32-bit OS again, it's that great). It's fast, quiet, and it has the ThinkPad's proven quality. As for screen size, I think this 15.4" 1920x1200 is great on the road, but I also have a 22" Lenovo L220X where I spend the most time working; a bigger and brighter stand-alone screen is simply irreplaceable as of today.

Wade Grandoni commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:11:01 GMT

SSD's are great if you can afford them but with 4GB of Ram, why not just run your complete src directory from a Ram Disk? You could even put your DB on the ram drive if you really wanted to. This is the cheepest way I've found to a blazing fast "disk". You'll notice compile times, test runs and visual studio/resharper performance go way up. There are free ram disk utilities and commercial ones that are relatively inexpensive available. Just google ram disk or ram drive to find them.

Ayende Rahien commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:02:04 GMT

Jeff, Overkill, certainly. I am currently writing dream checks, the sky is the limit with this situation. It'll get down to earth when I get to actually thinking about where I am going to pay for it from. I do a _lot_ of stuff on my laptop, a lot of development, demo, consulting, etc. Size / weight doesn't bother me much, mostly because I rarely run into the situations that you described. Battery life is important, yes, but not as much as pain free usage. If I can minimize the wait times, it is worth it

Jeff Brown commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:53:06 GMT

Sounds like overkill. You'll end up with a big heavy laptop that you won't be able to use anywhere. If the screen is any larger than a 12-13" widescreen you won't be able to use it on the plane because the seats are too close together. Ditto on busses and in cars. Even my little laptop is sometimes a little hard to use in economy class seats. I have a Vaio TX 610P which is an 11" widescreen ultraportable. It's only got a 1.1Ghz CPU, 1Gb RAM and something like 40Gb of disk space (I'd have to check) but it's just about perfect for coding on the go. I'm tempted to max it out at 1.5Gb RAM but so far it hasn't caused me too much trouble. Why? Form factor and battery life are more important than raw power when you're on the go. And yes, I have Visual Studio 2008, R# and everything else as usual on this laptop. Works like a champ for the most part. Obviously it's slower but it still gets the job done and it doesn't keep me waiting too much. Besides, no matter how beefy your box is, you'll still end up waiting for Visual Studio to do stuff or for Windows to move files around for whatever inexplicable reasons. And I can always remote into a beefier machine if I really need to.

Bunter commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:39:28 GMT

Getting one with XP (i.e. without vista) is one of the biggest performance gains. But one issue with both 32-bit Vista and XP is that they cannot use more than 3.1-3.3 GB of your 4GB. And 64 bit XP can be true pita when it comes down to driver support. Getting Dell XPS m1530 to run 64-bit XP was a battle lost here couple of weeks ago. A thing you forgot to mention is how much are you going to travel around with it. It not only reflects weight considerations but also the case. For example, some models of dell (inspirons, especially, i'm writing this message on one) doesn't really stand lot's of dragging and are rather fragile. In that sence IBM/Lenovo is one of the best i've seen. But in a long run, don't do intensive development on laptops. It's much easier to get all sorts of health problems while using them, at least so our occupational safety manager keeps telling us.

Brian commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:49:32 GMT

MacBook Pro - I just switched over this year, couldn't be happier. It is true that it has been my best Windows laptop I have ever owned. I know a lot of people who don't own a Mac will bash the idea, but unless they own one, I would be weary of their arguements against it. You get VMWare Fusion on a MacBook Pro, you get a great setup you never would have believed. By the way, now that I have it, I find myself trying to stay out of Windows more and more. Side effect to owning a Mac I guess....

Stuart Carnie commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:30:47 GMT

Fast HDD and 4GB RAM - most important. I'm going to upgrade my existing Macbook Pro to one of the new Penryn's when it comes out. 4GB RAM, 2.6GHz C2D, 7,200RPM drive, potentially the 17", as it's < 500g heavier than the 15". Can't say I'm happy with Vista either - so you may even want to steer clear of that. I updated to SP1 RC, and it had a number of issues - I reverted and all is well again.

Casey commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:45:22 GMT

I had a similar requirement nearly a year ago and went for a UK company ... http://www.rockdirect.com/viewNotebook.php?pName=XTREME%20770 20" screens are awesome .... display is amazing, heat is *hot* ... power drain = no battery life :) But it is awesomely fast ...

alberto commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:17:48 GMT

You should take into consideration that it you use a 32-bit OS you won't be able to use your 4GB, but only ~3GB. I would also go for a 15'' screen. 17 is way too big to be portable. As for the quad core, I don't think it's worth it, unless you are using your processor really heavily, not just compiling. A fast HDD is probably more important.

Steve commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:09:08 GMT

Forget SSD for now, too expensive.. get 4GB+ with 64-bit OS and then use RAM drive images for your development projects, makes visual studio run MUCH faster.

Tom Opgenorth commented on Looking for a new development laptop

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:42:52 GMT

I do a lot of travel with my laptop (I favour short contracts) and I'm glad I got "only" a 15" display. It's a bit easier to lug around. If I was more "static", I'd consider the 17" ones. I don't worry about the reduce screen real estate, because in most cases when I get to client sites I appropriate a monitor and run dual head. I've had good luck over the last few years with ASUS laptops. I'm thinking that for my next laptop (Probably in 6 ~ 8 months time), I'm probably getting a MacBook Pro, and upgrading it myself.