Laptop for software development

  • Thread starter Thread starter Aidan.
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A

Aidan.

Hi Y'All,

I'm (possibly) starting a new job soon and they require me to buy a
laptop, which they'll pay for (within reason) :-). Wondering whether
anyone has any recommendations? Will need to be high spec - to run
plenty of Windows-based database, internet and voice client/server
apps and VS.NET simultaneously. And maybe Half Life 2 in my spare time
(if I have any...) Lots of RAM, HD space and CPU grunt reqd. Also
would like decent battery life for those long inter-state trips (I'm
in Australia). Good screen real estate would be good. Should I go for
a fast Pentium-M or a P4/AMD? The Dell Inspiron 9200 looks good, but
may be a bit of a pain to lug about, plus seems to be more aimed for
multimedia.

TIA,

Aidan.
 
Aidan. said:
Hi Y'All,

I'm (possibly) starting a new job soon and they require me to buy a
laptop, which they'll pay for (within reason) :-). Wondering whether
anyone has any recommendations? Will need to be high spec - to run
plenty of Windows-based database, internet and voice client/server
apps and VS.NET simultaneously. And maybe Half Life 2 in my spare time
(if I have any...) Lots of RAM, HD space and CPU grunt reqd. Also
would like decent battery life for those long inter-state trips (I'm
in Australia). Good screen real estate would be good. Should I go for
a fast Pentium-M or a P4/AMD? The Dell Inspiron 9200 looks good, but
may be a bit of a pain to lug about, plus seems to be more aimed for
multimedia.

TIA,

Aidan.
Click to expand...

Go for the Pentium-M if battery life is at all a prerequisite.

I recently assisted a friend of mine with similar prerequisietes to
yours (she does statistical analysis, so CPU, RAM and HDD also the main
parameters).
Your main concern should be that the CPU gets maximum memory bandwidth,
so integrated VGA of any description is out of the question. The main
'problem' you will then hit is that almost all notebooks with a seperate
VGA chip are aimed at the multimedia market. However, if someone else is
paying this 'problem' is merely a way of being able to justify a good
Radeon Mobility chip and nice widescreen TFT (for HL2) to your employer
on the grounds that a notebook without them is castrated and thus far
less suited to your professional tasks ;)

As for which brand etc- that depends a lot on where you are buying, and
to what extent my experiences in NL are relevant to you in AU is
questionable. Here we have a good local pricewatch, so I searched for
the rough specs within most major brands and came up with two good
deals, an Acer 4xxx (I forget exactly which one) for about EUR 1210 with
Pentium-M 705 (Banias 1.5GHz) and 'normal' 15" screen and an Asus
M6700Ne for EUR 1360 with P-M 715 (Dothan 1.5GHz) and widescreen 15.4".
She chose the Asus...

In any event you'll probably get better value for money from brands who
manufacture their own hardware (Acer, Asus, to lesse extent Dell, HP)
than with brands that buy in 3rd party (usually Mitac) stuff (Packard
Bell, NEC, Jewel etc.), and IBM is the expensive Rolls-Royce if you can
convince the boss to pay :)
 
Aidan. said:
I'm (possibly) starting a new job soon and they require me to buy a
laptop, which they'll pay for (within reason) :-). Wondering whether
anyone has any recommendations? Will need to be high spec - to run
plenty of Windows-based database, internet and voice client/server
apps and VS.NET simultaneously. And maybe Half Life 2 in my spare time
(if I have any...) Lots of RAM, HD space and CPU grunt reqd. Also
would like decent battery life for those long inter-state trips (I'm
in Australia). Good screen real estate would be good. Should I go for
a fast Pentium-M or a P4/AMD? The Dell Inspiron 9200 looks good, but
may be a bit of a pain to lug about, plus seems to be more aimed for
multimedia.
Click to expand...

I suggest you insist on something with proper serial and parallel
ports, so as to be able to connect to various peripherals such as
PROM programmers, etc. USB is no substitute, since detailed timing
control is often needed. Get an appropriate base station into
which you can mount it, and have a decent keyboard and monitor.
 
Thanks Guys.

The ASUS looks good. My future employer mentioned at my interview they
were a good buy. There is a PM-735 (1.7 GHz) M6000NE available here
which looks good. Only 512Mb of RAM - was hoping for at least a gig
but I guess I can upgrade. Costs about 1900 Euros (3290 AUD) here, but
being in the middle of nowhere, hardware tends to be expensive in this
part of the world (we make it up with cheap beer and food). Has 15.4"
screen and 80Gb HD. Only weighs 2.6Kg compared to the Dell I was
looking at whicj weighs 3.5 Kg.

cheers,

Aidan.
 
dion_b said:
Go for the Pentium-M if battery life is at all a prerequisite.
Click to expand...

I believe that low specs are likely to have a longer battery life, ie.
no fancy graphics card etc.
I recently assisted a friend of mine with similar prerequisietes to
yours (she does statistical analysis, so CPU, RAM and HDD also the main
parameters).
Click to expand...

Hmm, are these really the main parameters for programming?
Your main concern should be that the CPU gets maximum memory bandwidth,
Really?

so integrated VGA of any description is out of the question. The main
Click to expand...

Why? Graphics cards are mainly for games aren't they? I can't see
how the VGA can effect the main RAM bandwidth, only the video memory.
Basic graphics cards are enough to display most programs and basic
games (but not HL2).
'problem' you will then hit is that almost all notebooks with a seperate
VGA chip are aimed at the multimedia market. However, if someone else is
paying this 'problem' is merely a way of being able to justify a good
Radeon Mobility chip and nice widescreen TFT (for HL2) to your employer
on the grounds that a notebook without them is castrated and thus far
less suited to your professional tasks ;)

As for which brand etc- that depends a lot on where you are buying, and
to what extent my experiences in NL are relevant to you in AU is
questionable. Here we have a good local pricewatch, so I searched for
the rough specs within most major brands and came up with two good
deals, an Acer 4xxx (I forget exactly which one) for about EUR 1210 with
Pentium-M 705 (Banias 1.5GHz) and 'normal' 15" screen and an Asus
M6700Ne for EUR 1360 with P-M 715 (Dothan 1.5GHz) and widescreen 15.4".
She chose the Asus...

In any event you'll probably get better value for money from brands who
manufacture their own hardware (Acer, Asus, to lesse extent Dell, HP)
than with brands that buy in 3rd party (usually Mitac) stuff (Packard
Bell, NEC, Jewel etc.), and IBM is the expensive Rolls-Royce if you can
convince the boss to pay :)
Click to expand...

I have just got a PII 400MHz with 128Mb, 6.4gb hd and a 14" screen.
It does the job, but is a bit slow at times. I have Visual studio
..NET 2003 (inc. the MSDN lib), Win 2k and OpenOffice. That uses about
5 Gb, which doesn't leave much. It's too slow for compiling, but I
don't think you'd need much more, I don't intend to use the laptop
very often though. My desktop is good enough for me and it's only a
1467Mhz Athlon XP.
 
CBFalconer said:
I suggest you insist on something with proper serial and parallel
ports, so as to be able to connect to various peripherals such as
PROM programmers, etc. USB is no substitute, since detailed timing
control is often needed. Get an appropriate base station into
which you can mount it, and have a decent keyboard and monitor.
Click to expand...

Do you really think he's gonna need a PROM programmer? I doubt it,
but it depends what his job is.
 
Nope, I doubt I'll need a PROM programmer. But I WILL need plenty of
RAM, HDD space and CPU grunt. The sort of systems I'll be working on
involve running a dozen different call centre servers and client
applications all talking to eachother, along with voice
encoding/decoding. I had to persuade my current company to buy me a new
(3.2Ghz P4/2 Gig RAM) desktop to do this kind of work, because my old
P2 machine just kept falling over.

cheers,

Aidan.
 
Nope, I doubt I'll need a PROM programmer. But I WILL need plenty of
RAM, HDD space and CPU grunt. The sort of systems I'll be working on
involve running a dozen different call centre servers and client
applications all talking to eachother, along with voice
encoding/decoding. I had to persuade my current company to buy me a
new (3.2Ghz P4/2 Gig RAM) desktop to do this kind of work, because
my old P2 machine just kept falling over.
Click to expand...

The programmer was just an example. Sounds as if you will have all
sorts of old devices with various means of access, and you will
probably need proper serial and/or parallel ports to do this. I
repeat, don't let them sell you USB replacements.
 
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