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I used to develop using a desktop (a P3 machine), but since I don't have that pc available (it's not longer with me), I decided to buy a laptop even just for home use, I actually don't work as a developer but still working on my own devprojects, so I have a laptop for work (the one they gave to me for work stuff) and the one I bought (a 1.4Ghz Centrino) for my own projects, I though it was not enough, so, I was thinking on get maybe a macmini as a server, but since the laptop performance is higher than I expected, I didn't buy the desktop.
BTW, wireless stuff is cool, I'm actually writing this from my bed 
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hear hear, I agree.
US robotics 1.25mb
I banned cables in the whole family when we moved to a new appartment 3
years ago. Switzerland was not so developed then and I had to buy The AP
and other stuff in Sweden (my native home) to get our network up and secure.
I pressed for a notebook at work but finaly had to buy my own and have never
had any regrets. Had to have a small barebone "desktop" to host an oracle db and
a webserver (we have a cable modem 2gb/600mb)
from bed, on the balcony, in the restroom even life in the 21 century
C#
Gupta Team Developer 3.1
VC++ 2003
Oracle 8i
W2K-XP
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In my company lots of colleagues got themselves a company laptop (was definitly cheaper than buying one).
Because of notorious network problems they are mostly unusable for office work.
Our department devellops software on Windows and QNX(realtime OS). An installation with two or more partitions is beyond the imaginative range of our computing center, which preinstalls all company pc's. This makes them unusable for most devellopment uses.
And of course we can't install any software which might make them usable for recreational purposes.
Myself, I use my private laptop seldomly for hard coding, mostly for scetching some concepts (typos on't matter).
Wolfgang Reichl
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Some time back I purchased a graphics board with
dual output. I love it! One can send the test
run over to the other monitor and view once code
on the main monitor. Though slightly off subject,
is one reason use a desktop and I highly recommend
dual monitors to developers.
(Do wish I had a laptop for those times I can
not be at my desk and have time on my hands  )
WedgeSoft
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Probably this only applies to where I live (Iraq), but due to the lack of electricity (12 hours/day, if I am lucky).
So Laptop can give me an extra time without the need for a generator, and uses a far less power with a generator.
4 doesn't have neither??!!!   I was about to vote for that (for joking););)
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well i use a laptop at work, as a second machine or as a second monitor for the desktop (using MaxiVista software).
As for home...
multiple-ple-ple-ple desktops (4)
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I couldn't get by without all three:
- The laptop is the editing platform (email, code, whatever)
- The desktop is the private experimental environment
- the server is for deploying tools and publishing information
I have this environment at home, too, where the desktop is a MacOS X box and the server does my intranet, home automation, and archival tasks. This ain't big bucks -- the home server is an old two-way Pentium Pro 200 box running NT4 with ASP.NET hosted in Mono.
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Being software developers, we had long used laptops to for presentations and demos. The problem is when your product need advanced services, like web application and database servers, laptops make your demos crappy. We have finally thrown away all our laptops and are now using mini-cubes as mobile (luggable) workstations. Much, much, much better.
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It depends what type of laptop you are using. I find my laptop very fast. I can do a full build of 200,000 lines of C++ code in less than 30 seconds.
The machine I have was bought last year and you can find much faster today (and perhaps cheaper, as I paid $2000 USD). I have a 3.0 GHz /w 800 MHz FSB, 1 GB of RAM DDR400 and a 7200 RPM hard disk. The resolution I am using is 1600x1200. I can play games on this laptop without problem.
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I purchased a Gateway Laptop that runs a true P4 HT desktop processor ... with 1 gig of ram and a 60GB HD, it has plenty of power to perform such tasks as those you mentioned above.
Now, if you use a wireless network for your demos, THEN you'll have performance issues ... but standalone ... no, you just need to find yourself a better laptop; there are plenty out there, and they generally don't costs much more than their slower counterparts.
Downside: my battery life is about 2 hours, but the full desktop power is well worth it.
D.
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To be honest I have never seen a real difference between a laptop and a desktop... you just have to pay more for a laptop. The main issue I see with laptops when people complain about them being slower then their desktop is the hard drive. People say that they have this processor in their pc and this memory and they have the same in their laptop and the desktop is still faster!.. almost every time the person has a sh*tty slow laptop hard drive... change it, and the laptop is as fast as the desktop.
Regards,
Brian Dela
Now Bloging![^]
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I can vouch for the Hard drive issue. My laptop is about 4 years old. It is only 400Mhz system. If I could replace the hard-drive with RAM only, I would have a system that "screams". With the hard-drive I have to wait sometimes minutes to do anything.
--
"The money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its rule by preying upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is concentrated in a few hands and the Republic destroyed."
-- Abraham Lincoln
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I don't know what laptops or desktops you have used but I have always noticed a big speed difference between laptops and desktops. The hard drive on my 1.4 GHz Centrino p4 dell laptop (paid over $2000 last year) with 512 MB DDR is dirt slow. I would compare the speed of it to desktop drives from 5 to 7 years ago. Compiles take several minutes longer compared to my Athlon XP 2400 desktop with 512 MB of DDR and a 120 GB WD 7200 RPM drive. I admit this was the base 32 GB 5400 RPM drive from dell so maybe a hard drive upgrade is in order but at the current speed I'd go nuts trying to do any real programming on the system.
John
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As far as laptop power goes, i like my Alienware Area 51m, it beats my pc by miles, although the pc is getting old, upgrading time i think . the two downsides with an all powerful laptop are that it is heavy (~3Kg), and its fan sounds like a small rocket if i use ut for more graphics hungry apps/games. but i bought it to play games on and to program, and it suits me fine.
I use VNC from it to my PC which is always switched on at uni, so i can get stuff off all my harddrives without carrying them anywhere best of both worlds 
http://www.infinity.co.nr
http://www.casiofortissimo.co.nr
There are 10 types of people, those who can count in binary, and those who cant!
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I justed upgraded my laptop this afternoon with an additional 512 MB ddr memory. Else I wouldn't get my LL(1) checker compiled.
WM.
What about weapons of mass-construction?
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I work in a place (medical research department) where most people prefer to use a laptop over their desktop. I really can't see me ever doing this for programming. The keyboard is too small (and the control keys are in weird places). The mouse pad thingy sucks. The display is way too small and the hard drive performs as bad as desktops did 5 years ago.
With that said I still do have use for my laptop, besides playing movies and checking my email when I travel. I use remote debugging a lot with my direct draw applications (just about every app I have worked on in the last 7 years). It's really nice to be able to sit the laptop right next to the workstation I am debugging my application on and create a remote session to my desktop pc to debug the application.
John
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Work = desktop
Home = laptop (for development), older desktop (non-dev)
/ravi
My new year's resolution: 2048 x 1536
Home | Articles | Freeware | Music
ravib@ravib.com
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I have a desktop, and a PPC for when I am out and about.
Peter Tewkesbury
Lead Developer
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You know what the problem with a PPC is?
You can't do .NET development on it, besides mono.
I know there's virtual PC for that matter, but still. Virtual PC is slow and what I need is pure power, not some virtual computer that runs at half the speed of a normal computer.
I am thinking about an iBook as laptop. But I will stick with my trusty 2.8 GHZ P4 with 1 GB mem.
WM.
What about weapons of mass-construction?
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WillemM wrote:
You know what the problem with a PPC is?
You can't do .NET development on it, besides mono.
This is not completely accurate. You can develop in C# on a PPC. Check out
http://weblogs.asp.net/pleloup/archive/2004/06/09/151853.aspx[^]
Slow, and not complete, but possible.
Peter Tewkesbury
Lead Developer
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I think we have a mis understanding here
I am talking about PPC (Mac power PC) and I think you mean the pocket PC
A pocket pc for developing in C# [laugh] that's just weird!
WM.
What about weapons of mass-construction?
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Why, in the name of all that is good and right, would you even consider using a Crapple? Yuk! Ick! Disgusting. Really, I am surrounded by fanatical Mac fans where I work. My first day of work some years back I found a new G4 sitting on my desk. I though huh, cool? I was willing to give it a fair shot as I am usualy hip on something different. It was a wonderfully useless tool. OS9 didn't crash much but it would constantly hang (more memory please). There were only four applications installed that had any value (MS Office constituted three of them) and there was horrible compatibility issues with Office docs ect. I was give OSX first in the building because I was a suitable Guinea Pig and at first I was groovin. Unix! I feel closer to home. That is until I used it and realized just how freakin SLOW it was. I mean, common! All that money spent on a box that can't scroll a PDF? Maybe if we just throw another 3 grand in the form of a new G5 at it? Whoops! Nope, still slower than my P3 laptop on the apps I really need. And this is progress? Give me a break! Oh, wait. It looks pretty sitting there doing nothing. Well there was a time when that line applied to my Ex also but things change you see.....
I now have a PC that hardly ever crashes. I have one app that was ported over from the Mac that runs for poo-poo but then it was garbage on the Mac also so WCYE. The rest of the myriad things I, want and use work hitch less. And I am happier now (it is bad enough not getting a corner office but Windowless ones are the absolute pits). I just don't mention it to certain cohorts. Oh and yes I always did have a Windows laptop. There is no Mac support (and almost certainly never will be) for all the various pieces of FA I need to communicate with so it is an absolute necessity.
There, I done it. Let the flames roll!
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davemc759 wrote:
There, I done it. Let the flames roll!
No need, people like me can smile at your complete lack of understanding about the Mac platform. Go on though, continue to despise them for bogus reasons, and be proud of your ignorance!
Jeremy Falcon
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Please do your comments some form of justice and qualify them. You can start by explaining why the majority of applications I need to perform my job are not available on the Mac. Then maybe you can tell me why apps running on OS9 would constantly hang when I ran then in tandem. Then maybe you can explain why on earth OSX is so slow and regardless what you might want to think it is incredibly slow at performing the real world tasks I needed it to do; big on eye candy but unbearalby small on performance. Or maybe it would be better if you didn't bother. I know what I experience and simply don't want to deal with it again. I am curious though why it is some people get so into their macs. With some people it is almost like talking to them about their favorite band; very emotional... just check your logic at the door type conversations. Maybe that is what really needs explaining.
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