Which Laptop for Software Development

[SimonMac]

probably web stuff so VS2012, Intellij and Sql server management Studio/

I doubt I will need to run many databases on the box if that helps.

One downside is that there is no difference in price between the 15" 8gb 256gb and the 13" 8gb 256gb so its possible to live with 128gb of disk space the 15" wins by default.

I run VS2010, SQL 2008 R2 and BizTalk 2010 on a Windows 2008 R2 VM, allocated 4gb ram, with the other 4gb ram for the host and it flies

 

[eek]

Which Laptop for Software Development

How much disk space does that take up

 

[SimonMac]

How much disk space does that take up

I have a 100GB allocated but only using 60gb (on the host) with another 10gb of snapshots. There is a lot of free space on the virtual machines disks so with more efficient management it could be done better

 

[Spacecadet]

More importantly, will it run run GTA V when it comes out

 

[darmstadt]

I was looking at these but they just didn't quite hit the spot for me so I went for a real developers machine: Lenovo W530, i7 vPro, 32gb RAM, 1920*1080, 750gb drive (thinking of adding an SSD) and that really flies. I run multiple VMs plus some specialised emulation software that requires power and memory. The only problem is the disk is nearly full as some files can grow to 127gb and I have a few of them...

 

[eek]

More importantly, will it run run GTA V when it comes out

the 15" with dedicated graphics card will easily do that.

 

[VectraMan]

I've found there's a big performance difference with VS2010 in 6GB or 8GB vs 4GB. Not sure why, it doesn't really add up, but the extra definitely made a world of difference.

 

[Scrag Meister]

Dell XPS 15, 8Gb, I7, 512Gb SSD, 1.25Gb GFX card tulip off a shovel.

HDMI for watching stream movies to a TV

Facial recognistion login, Full HD res screen.

Had it since Sept, very pleased with it.

External monitors, larger screens are useful when doing the dev stuff though.

 

[cykophysh39]

I think there are more questions you need to ask yourself here.

Are you likely to run Virtual Machines?
How many Virtual Machines are you going to run at a time?
What are you going to run VM's i.e Biztalk, SQL Server, Sharepoint yada yada

What type of development are you going to do? Web Dev? Enterprise Dev?

How many Operating systems do you target in your Dev?


Answering these questions usually lead to uping the spec of your machine, due to memory and processor usage etc.

If you just doing a bit of php web dev, then either of those machines will do, and yoru choice can basically come down to Screen size for mobility. but you may want to consider what type of docking stations are available for the machines, if you're like me and cart your laptop between work and home and have workstations setup.

Thats my 2p's worth anyway