Laptop Development Environment
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I am looking for suggestions for a laptop development enviroment... I'd like to have VS6, Sql Server, and IIS. I'm not a hardware person, so I don't know what issues I might encounter setting up a laptop like a desktop machine. Thanks!
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I am looking for suggestions for a laptop development enviroment... I'd like to have VS6, Sql Server, and IIS. I'm not a hardware person, so I don't know what issues I might encounter setting up a laptop like a desktop machine. Thanks!
I have my little P3-600 running all of those using Windows XP beta2. I had Win2k on it before XP and it ran fine. Definately get alot of memory, or add it yourself after you get the laptop. Of course in the Sunday papers yesterday (prolly just in the US), BestBuy had a nice little Compaq laptop with these specs: Athlon 4 1GHz, 128M ram, 14.1 TFT, 8x DVD, 20G drive, 3-3.5 hours of battery power. Overall it looks pretty good to me. A friend of mine was pricing P3 laptops a week ago and this Athlon based one is only $80 more than a P3 laptop, the rest is the same. And I think we all know how the Athlon 1G compared to the P3 1G ;) . Anand's review of this new chip from AMD says that its going to be the chip people are using in their desktops in a few months. If I didn't have this laptop already I would get one. Oh well. I'll have to wait until my wife want my laptop fulltime for herself and then I can get this new one. Steve Maier, MCSD
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I am looking for suggestions for a laptop development enviroment... I'd like to have VS6, Sql Server, and IIS. I'm not a hardware person, so I don't know what issues I might encounter setting up a laptop like a desktop machine. Thanks!
I have a Dell Latitude C800 and it is awesome!!! I highly recommend Dell laptops. I have this same configuration with Windows 2000 and VS.NET also and it runs great. Jason Gerard MCSD, MCSE Technology Point International, Inc.
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I am looking for suggestions for a laptop development enviroment... I'd like to have VS6, Sql Server, and IIS. I'm not a hardware person, so I don't know what issues I might encounter setting up a laptop like a desktop machine. Thanks!
I have a toshiba tecra 8100, which has a P3 700, 256MB RAM, 14.1 inch screen and a 12 Gig drive. Any laptop you get you'll definately need at least 256MB RAM. I've used toshiba laptops for the past 6 years and they have all worked great. One of the things I love about them is that they use an eraser head mouse pointer instead of the the touch pad in most other laptops (Dell, Compaq, Etc). I've also heard a lot of good things about IBM thinkpads, but they can be very expensive. Jason Cono, MCSD
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I have a toshiba tecra 8100, which has a P3 700, 256MB RAM, 14.1 inch screen and a 12 Gig drive. Any laptop you get you'll definately need at least 256MB RAM. I've used toshiba laptops for the past 6 years and they have all worked great. One of the things I love about them is that they use an eraser head mouse pointer instead of the the touch pad in most other laptops (Dell, Compaq, Etc). I've also heard a lot of good things about IBM thinkpads, but they can be very expensive. Jason Cono, MCSD
I am currently working with a Toshiba Tecra 8100 / 650 and can fully agree with you. The only thing I would suggest si to have a DVD. If you need mobility with your laptop it's much better to have the MSDN Library one a DVD instead on 2 or 3 CDs and DiskSpace is very precious, especially if when using SQL-Server and possibly up to 3 prim. partitions for testing. Rainer Mangold
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I am looking for suggestions for a laptop development enviroment... I'd like to have VS6, Sql Server, and IIS. I'm not a hardware person, so I don't know what issues I might encounter setting up a laptop like a desktop machine. Thanks!
Your suggestions are great. The issue that I am worried about, is with regard to the bios and drivers for the laptop. Has anyone encountered software installation issues? What about the energy management software built into laptops? Thanks, Robert
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Your suggestions are great. The issue that I am worried about, is with regard to the bios and drivers for the laptop. Has anyone encountered software installation issues? What about the energy management software built into laptops? Thanks, Robert
If you use Windows 2000, you shouldn't have any driver problems. NT 4.0 on the other hand can be a MAJOR pain to get working with a laptop. I believe some vendors ship laptops with W2K already installed, so that is your best bet. As others have already mentioned, get a lot of RAM, 512 megabytes if you can. A large ammount of ram is necessary if you want it to be useable, especially with SQLServer and developer studio. The main problem with laptops as development machines is that the hard disks are so slow. If you can afford a little less portability, you can get an external drive (either SCSI or Firewire) and that should help quite a bit. Chris Hafey PS - I think W2K handles the energy management pretty well.
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If you use Windows 2000, you shouldn't have any driver problems. NT 4.0 on the other hand can be a MAJOR pain to get working with a laptop. I believe some vendors ship laptops with W2K already installed, so that is your best bet. As others have already mentioned, get a lot of RAM, 512 megabytes if you can. A large ammount of ram is necessary if you want it to be useable, especially with SQLServer and developer studio. The main problem with laptops as development machines is that the hard disks are so slow. If you can afford a little less portability, you can get an external drive (either SCSI or Firewire) and that should help quite a bit. Chris Hafey PS - I think W2K handles the energy management pretty well.
I agree with Chris that Win2K is alot better choice than NT4. Be careful tho that you get one that does have official 2K drivers. For my Compaq, I had to get drivers from a higher version of Presario. Mind you they did work, but I had to hunt for them and there was NO guarantee that they would would right. So do alittle research on the support pages of the laptops you are thinking of getting. Steve Maier, MCSD
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Your suggestions are great. The issue that I am worried about, is with regard to the bios and drivers for the laptop. Has anyone encountered software installation issues? What about the energy management software built into laptops? Thanks, Robert
I've got a Dell Inspiron 3700, running W2K and the only driver problem I had was with a Zio! smartmedia USB card reader. Blue screens every time. Other than that everything has worked perfectly Specs are P3 450, 128Mb, W2K Server, SQL Server 2000, VS.NET. Another 128Mb would be nice but I think it's time for a new machine. I love the Dell (esp the keyboard and the choice of touchpad or joystick), but it's a little big and heavy. cheers, Chris Maunder
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I am looking for suggestions for a laptop development enviroment... I'd like to have VS6, Sql Server, and IIS. I'm not a hardware person, so I don't know what issues I might encounter setting up a laptop like a desktop machine. Thanks!
As already mentioned by others : Don't even think about some other OS than Windows 2000. Just don't. As long as your machine has - enough memory - enough harddisk space and is reasonably fast, I don't see any problems. I used to do some software development (W2K with VC6) on my trusty old Mitac 6133 (cel-366 with 160MB and a 12G harddisk) Since I'm an addict to screen resolution, I recently upgraded to another notebook. XGA (1024x768) is not enough for me, hence I went for a DELL Inspiron 8000 with an UXGA (1600x1200) display. If you're not visually impaired (UXGA on a 15" display _is_ rather small), this could be the machine to go. This machine has a pIII-600 (the slowest they had back then) 256MB and a 12G harddisk. In my experience the performance "boost" you might obtain by a faster processor you'll obtain more easier by adding some more RAM. Modern notebook harddisks are not really equally performant as desktop harddisks, but the current breed of notebook harddisks is as performant as last year's desktop harddisks. Another pro of the Inspiron is it's integrated firewire (ieee 1394) connector. You can hook up an external harddisk and a fast CD writer to it. The data throughput with an external harddisk is quite similar to the built-in harddisk. DELL is not perfect, though. The case of this machine is rather flimsy. But for notebooks with higher resolutions than XGA DELL is the only way to go. OK, IBM is another way to go, but they are much more expensive.
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As already mentioned by others : Don't even think about some other OS than Windows 2000. Just don't. As long as your machine has - enough memory - enough harddisk space and is reasonably fast, I don't see any problems. I used to do some software development (W2K with VC6) on my trusty old Mitac 6133 (cel-366 with 160MB and a 12G harddisk) Since I'm an addict to screen resolution, I recently upgraded to another notebook. XGA (1024x768) is not enough for me, hence I went for a DELL Inspiron 8000 with an UXGA (1600x1200) display. If you're not visually impaired (UXGA on a 15" display _is_ rather small), this could be the machine to go. This machine has a pIII-600 (the slowest they had back then) 256MB and a 12G harddisk. In my experience the performance "boost" you might obtain by a faster processor you'll obtain more easier by adding some more RAM. Modern notebook harddisks are not really equally performant as desktop harddisks, but the current breed of notebook harddisks is as performant as last year's desktop harddisks. Another pro of the Inspiron is it's integrated firewire (ieee 1394) connector. You can hook up an external harddisk and a fast CD writer to it. The data throughput with an external harddisk is quite similar to the built-in harddisk. DELL is not perfect, though. The case of this machine is rather flimsy. But for notebooks with higher resolutions than XGA DELL is the only way to go. OK, IBM is another way to go, but they are much more expensive.
Plus there was that big laptop battery recall from Dell recently. I have used a Celeron based laptop and the P3 one just blows it out of the water. I think that the new AMD based ones will be a good speed too. I guess it just depends also on how much you are looking to spend. Laptop memory is pretty cheap if you buy it off the web instead of from the dealer as an add on. Not sure how much the big companies charge tho. Steve Maier, MCSD