Reply to: Laptop with VMs/Virtual PCs

[zazou]

Current setup:
MacBook Pro 13 (early 2015), maxed out (i7, 1TB SSD, 16GB).

I run Windows 10 Pro on Parallels Desktop as a dev machine. Visual Studio + SQL Server Management Studio. 3 cores + about 6GB in memory allocated makes it more than reasonably quick.

Had a Sony Vaio Pro Touch 13 before but it just didn't cut the mustard having only 8GB of memory and 128GB SSD.

Verdict: I like it a lot, plenty of oomph from the i7 (5557U) and very portable. Happy with it as a dev machine for the side project. Occasionally I toy with the quad core big brother 15 inch but it's just too heavy and bulky.

[suityou01]

I've been down this road and you end up spending a lot of cash and are often disappointed with the results.

I have specced and built a FO big gamers desktop, banged all my VMs on there and access them remotely over VPN.

If it's good enough for the big boys, it's good enough for me.

[LondonManc]

I use a HP Proliant Microserver, cost £100 and added memory and disks for another couple of hundred

What base operating system do you use, Windows Server 20xx?

[DallasDad]

Separate Tails VM for online Banking and other secure transactions

https://tails.boum.org/

[Boney M]

I use a HP Proliant Microserver, cost £100 and added memory and disks for another couple of hundred

[LondonManc]

Separate porn VM?

Nah, that's what a 2TB Buffalo Linkstation is for. Allegedly.

[DimPrawn]

Separate porn VM?

Safest way.

[stek]

Given that a lot of my time is spent away from home during the week it would be multi-purpose and a personal expense, not a business one. I always err on the side of caution from a business expenses point of view.

Separate porn VM?

[LondonManc]

Given that a lot of my time is spent away from home during the week it would be multi-purpose and a personal expense, not a business one. I always err on the side of caution from a business expenses point of view.

[Boo]

I have always gone on the "NLUK rule" if its not wholely and exclusively for business it cannot be a legitimate expense

Of course the purpose of the laptop has to meet the "wholly, necessarily and exclusively" rule but that does not preclude incidental use as is enshrined even in HMRC's own advice. And the said advice specifically states that "incidental" not be defined wrt the proportion of useage but instead by factors like the effect on cost etc.

Boo

[DallasDad]

This:
SSD or 2 if you can find a laptop that has capacity
I ran the core OS and day to day tools on one drive and hosted the images via an SSD caddy in the DVD bay when running a DC, DNS, DHCP server + Iscsi target, a DFS cluster and a bunch of migration test servers so typically 7-10s guests at once

Buy all the male sheep you can afford but if using HyperV the memory management is pretty good.

Are you talking Windows hosts and guest here?
If you are going to keep the guests patched then think of a smart way to do patch distribution umpteen guests all pulling down patches every second Tuesday will make any machine a tad slow!
Wsus would be handy.

Dated but still brilliant howto here for an MS sandpit which I expanded on to evaluate and document using DFS consolidated roots for a client.

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...ver-over-smb2/

[SueEllen]

I have always gone on the "NLUK rule" if its not wholely and exclusively for business it cannot be a legitimate expense

You can have incidental use of laptops etc.

I have no idea how much time the OP will spend time on it skilling up and doing business stuff vs watching films.

Personally I watch films etc on TV as the screens are better and I use various boxes under the TV rather than the laptop.

[SimonMac]

The latter.

I have always gone on the "NLUK rule" if its not wholely and exclusively for business it cannot be a legitimate expense

[SueEllen]

IMHO no, even once or twice a month using a video player or music streamer like spotifiy would make having the non personal aspect of his usage not go through a VM.

Or did you mean how much personal use the laptop would have compared to business use as to whether or not he can legitimately claim it as a business expense?

The latter.

[DimPrawn]

Well, if you are looking for running lots are rather large VM's, a Dell Precision 17 7000 Series (7710) can be specced with 64GB RAM and a fast i7 CPU for about £2200 exc VAT.

There's not many professional 64GB capable laptops, and this works well if you are using it for serious work.