Ultimate Developer Laptop

Like any developer/IT pro, my schedule is nowhere close to the mythical 9-5. I have to put out the fires, keep up with the never-ending onslaught of email, research current and upcoming technologies, keep the servers patched and happy and…oh yeah…code some content. I can’t seem to fit it all into the daytime hours, so it’s home I go with laptop in tow…

Okay, it’s late at night, the kids are all in bed and it’s time to squeeze in some non-interrupted coding time. Out comes the old laptop and – hmmm – we got a bit of a problem Lucy. I’ve got a 2-3 year old 15" Centrino-based laptop with a max resolution of 1280×768 and a single 80Gig hard drive. By the time I load the OS, Visual Studio, the MSDN documentation, Virtual PC and a server virtual machine or two – I’m out of space and waaaay under powered. Not to mention that the latest version of my app and/or the images I needed and/or {insert file here} is still on my desktop machine back at work. And did I mention that cool developer tool that I loaded on the desktop machine but never got around to installing on the laptop? So much for my productivity.

In the past, I’ve tried to remote desktop into the machine at work and take it over to get things done. That way I’m working in the same environment that I had during the day. When I’m on the road, however, that hotel wi-fi never seems to have enough bandwidth. Not to mention that trying to develop on a 1280×768 screen is pretty painful. Just not enough screen real-estate. Time to look into a notebook that will also serve as a desktop replacement.

The requirements:

At least 1080 (if not 1200) lines of resolution on a widescreen display to allow me to pin my VS panes open
Plenty of CPU horsepower while still being able to hold the laptop on your lap without 3rd degree burns
Support for 4Gigs of RAM
Dual 7200RPM drives – 1 for the OS and apps, the 2nd spindle for the server Virtual Machines – the bigger the better
What the heck – let’s go ahead and do Vista x64 while we’re at it
Let’s make it heavy too. That way I’ll get a good workout while I’m hoofing it from work to home and back.

The solution:

After much deliberation and searching, I decided on the Dell XPS M1730 gaming laptop.

I spec’d it out with the 2nd fastest Core 2 Duo proc (never seems to be enough money to go with the fastest proc), 4Gigs of RAM, dual 7200 RPM 200Gig drives and the 1900×1200 display (sweet). I talked them into leaving off the Aegia Physx board to shave some bucks off the price. Even with all this hardware goodness, the Dell was STILL about $1,000 cheaper than a loaded MacBook Pro with only one hard drive! (I so wanted to get a MacBook Pro…just so I could put the "Windows Vista" sticker in the middle of the Apple on the cover. Oh well.)

Now I’ve got my cake and I can eat it too. I’ve got my developer environment with me at work, home and on the road, and I’ve got plenty of storage and the 2nd spindle to run my VM’s on. Now I can wipe my desktop PC and use it to play with Hyper-V when I get my hands on it…

Doug