Tell me about developer PCs, who is better than Dell? - Chat Forum

Re: Tell me about developer PCs, who is better than Dell?

brassneck — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:07:45 +0000

Bit apples and oranges (pun sort of intended)comparing a workstation class box with a 'white box' build (I'm assuming the Dell is a XPS or something).

That said, I've had so few problems with commodity PCs these days I'm not sure I'd bother to buy a workstation at premium. RAID is nowt special on SATA these days. It's really only to get the higher class of processors that don't tend to appear in the normal models - Core2 Quad should be easily available in all ranges, but processor choice should be carefully weighed - you might get better performance from fewer, faster cores.. i5 has turbo boost (official overclock on demand) for example. I'm discounting unofficial overclocks though I know it can be done perfectly happily I'd keep that for my home PC.

Re: Tell me about developer PCs, who is better than Dell?

stevehine — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:05:12 +0000

Multiple projects - yes; multiple solutions - no.

Each solution will contain several projects; however each 'deliverable' module (e.g. a Windows Service or WCF service) will be a single solution referencing only it's required project files.

Re: Tell me about developer PCs, who is better than Dell?

molgrips — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:56:11 +0000

Doesn't it let you open multiple projects?

It all seems very weird to me!

Re: Tell me about developer PCs, who is better than Dell?

xiphon — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:55:17 +0000

molgrips - Member
Multiple copies of Visual Studio
?

Developing multiple separate applications, which might need to be tested interacting together.

Re: Tell me about developer PCs, who is better than Dell?

molgrips — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:53:47 +0000

Multiple copies of Visual Studio

Re: Tell me about developer PCs, who is better than Dell?

stevehine — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:48:31 +0000

What's using all the ram?

Multiple copies of Visual Studio; SQL Server (yes I know it's configurable - it still needs plenty of RAM if you are using it with a large/frequently accessed db); Sharepoint and FAST Esp

I have various VM's with some of the above components on each depending on what I'm working on - I have occasional need to run two vm's concurrently for integration testing / debugging.

Re: Tell me about developer PCs, who is better than Dell?

xiphon — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:39:15 +0000

So it's reserving available ram for cache then, presumably. It must be configurable. Isn't there server/workstation config/install option? That idea seems to ring a bell in my head.

Just cos it grabs it doesn't mean it actually needs it. I've run SQL server on modest dev boxes before, albeit a few years ago.

Yes, you can configure it. IIRC by default it will use whatever it can.

Our developer recently upgraded from an Athlon XP shuttle / 1GB RAM (waaaay out of date!) to a HP Z400 / 12GB RAM / 6-core Xeon / 160GB SSD.

He was running VS 2008 / SQL 05 / IIS / and other stuff..... it worked, but very very slowly.

Needless to say, his productivity went through the roof. What took 20mins to compile, now takes 50 seconds....

Re: Tell me about developer PCs, who is better than Dell?

TurnerGuy — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:36:15 +0000

I cope with one at home but it is 1920x1200 - 1600x1200 for a single would be my minimum or it would be a resigning issue...

Re: Tell me about developer PCs, who is better than Dell?

molgrips — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:32:45 +0000

Yes one ginormous monitor would be good, but they are silly expensive.

I don't think having one normal sized monitor is that much of a drag on productivity tho. I mean two is easy and convenient, but I can still work just as well on one.

Re: Tell me about developer PCs, who is better than Dell?

Tiger6791 — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:31:27 +0000

Cheers for the Eclipse link, they look good and the Fujitsu ones