Which Laptop ?

[fiddleabout]

Re: hmmm

1.6 Centrino is approximately equivalent to a 2.4 P4 - the exact equivalent depends on exactly what you are running so it varies from application to application.

For what it's worth I'll tell you what my cheapskate solution would be and why....

Desktop equivalent notebooks are expensive, heavy, noisy, and run hot.

Keep the laptop you've got and network to a seperate desktop architecture PC for the server. If you want small and pretty then look at the Shuttle style PCs otherwise beige boxes are cheap as chips and you can shove it in a cupboard somewhere.

The server can run either windows or linux.
The network can be wired or wireless.
You only need a screen/keyboard/mouse for initial config - after that use UltraVNC to control it from the laptop.
When you are not doing dev work it can either sit running peer-peer downloading 'educational' material over adsl or be put to work cracking your mums AOL parental controls password.

I've no doubt you'll ignore all that though as you want a big swanky notebook to take into work to impress your boss - that may be wasted effort though - many managers in charge of the server room backup/cleaning team can't tell one notebook from another.

[OrangeHopper]

Re: Thanks

> The benefits of using macs?

It is very difficult to justify, from a cost basis, a switch from a PC to a Mac. The thing is though, once you have done it you are unlikely to switch back. Life with a Mac is just that much easier. You can concentrate on the job and not on the machine/OS.

In the early days I used ours for DTP and basic company paperwork. Now, with UNIX under the hood I have a full blown development environment (for free) with all the standard shareware that comes with it. So things like databasing, xml, web servers and so on are just a download and install away. As a general rule, the software I write is 95% platform independent so the Mac now satisfies all my requirements.

The other advantage I have found over the years has been the life expectancy of the machines. Usually in excess of 5 years. The main reason being that they come with everything you will need in the way of comms. My laptop, which is now 5 years old, has Ethernet, SCSI, USB and Firewire thus is both backwardly and forwardly compatible with all the equipment I own or conceivable require in the near future. Always remember you are likely to find anything new on the Mac first.

In ten years of use I have only suffered a couple of disc failures. Yes, Macs can have problems but which computer maufacturer doesn't from time to time?

[MilanB]

Desktop or Laptop

Fiddle thanks for your, you got me thinking but it has to be a laptop, why ?

Need to be able to take the app with me as support for my work and personal sandbox installation - this is why the laptop wins

Also I don't mind spending on a laptop as the price comes off my tax and I see it positively as an investment in my future

Thanks for the explanation of the Centrino/Pentium power ratio

Does anyone know the answer to the PageFile question... how does the Page file as an extension to existing Ram compare to straight Ram ? For example I've seen Toshiba's P4 3ghz 60gb hd and 512mb Ram for good prices, and I was thinking I could get the extra 512 mb ram from the Page file - what does the jury think on this cheapskate solution ?

In your old age, what are you talking about with this comment ? that may be wasted effort though - many managers in charge of the server room backup/cleaning.

Looks like it's gonna be another Toshiba.

Thanks,

Milan.

[AtW]

Re: Thanks

> It is very difficult to justify, from a cost basis, a switch from
> a PC to a Mac.

ya indeed - cost of time you will consider obvious answer (NO) to this question is enough to buy a few extra PCs.

AtW in "bash the Mac mode"

[Vetran]

Re: Thanks

Milan

compare the speed of disk access to memory access, when you swap to pagefile you have to wite to disk which is (depending on architecture obviously) hundreds of times slower. If you do that regularly it becomes annoying.

Question is do your apps need 1GB?

512 may be sufficient, you could of course upgrade afterwards using someone like crucial (www.crucial.com).

try running what you would like to run on another machine with 512mb ram, don't forget many laptops 'share' the memory for video so you may end up losing 128 MB to the video card.

As fiddle says why would you need a swanky laptop if all you are doing is running the tape swap spreadsheet off it?
Do it on your palmos machine or via a web page like everyone else

[MilanB]

ok ok

Vetran,

firstly I shall ignore the Mainframe tape backup humour.

When you old timers graduate into today's and tomorrow's enterprise level application technology you will see that it has all become processor and memory intensive.

For example the apps I intend to run on my laptop, we are running at work in Production with 4 cpu's and 4 gigs of ram - but for a personal sandbox I think I'll get away with it on 1 gb ram - I'm not worried about performance just want to test concepts.

You are right though, firstly I'll try running it on the existing laptop and see if it will work, if not then it's a new one.

Milan.

[AtW]

Re: ok ok

> For example the apps I intend to run on my laptop, we are
> running at work in Production with 4 cpu's and 4 gigs of ram

First revelation about the kind of hardware setup Milan's code requires to be running

[fiddleabout]

Re: ok ok

Also remember he mentioned 4Gb but thought 1Gb would do. IIRC few laptops support more than 1Gb and most pockets don't support that for a laptop with proprietory memory - it's expensive even with standard sodimms as there is often only one slot available.

I'm beginning to think that Milan's app would be better suited to a different platform. In the days when I was the techie supporting an over-optimistic salesman I always found that my demos ran better on a slide projector than on a computer. From Milan's comments I'm certain his would

[MilanB]

IIRC

Fiddle,

"IIRC few laptops support more than 1Gb "

was that before Noah's Arc or after ?

Higher end laptops I've looked at are supporting up to 2gb of ram.

Yesterday I checked a Toshiba P4 3ghz with 512mb ram, it will cost an extra 210 Euros to order it with 1gb ram and it supports up to 2gbs ram.

Something funny though, the Tosh is cheaper than the Dell on a like for like basis and the extra 512mb of ram on the Tosh costs 210Euros and on the Dell Inspiron it costs 350 Euros funny that isn't it - I am starting to conclude that Dell have the same business plan as Tescos, brainwash everyone to think their products are the cheapest when in fact they're not.

A different platform you say, you are right this stuff is more suited to Solaris or HP/UX but I can't afford the right spec solaris machine and as we already have this stuff running sandbox at work on a 1gb ram p4 I think it will be ok on an equivalent spec laptop.

But saying all that, like Vetran said I'll try to get it going on the existing laptop before proceeding.

Alright your go...

Milan.

[fiddleabout]

Re: IIRC

Yeah it's been a while since I looked at laptop specs. I only use my laptop for a bit of web browsing and developing in php/mysql so I don't need a powerful one - this 600 Celeron with 256Mb is more than adequate.

On the MAC front my website stats seem to indicate that most of the world don't agree with orangehopper ..

  
OS             Nb  
 Win XP      42.2 %  
 Win 98      19.6 %  
 Other         12.0 %  
 Win 2000   10.5 %  
 Win Me      9.5 %  
 Win NT       3.7 %  
 Win 95       1.5 %  
 Mac PPC    0.7 %  
 Linux          0.3 %

having said that we should all realise that 5hit is healthy as 20billion flies can't be wrong.