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The primary virtue of a virtual machine is that it's easy to restore its virtue.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Just wondering, what people think of the specs of the Razer Gaming Laptops for use as development machines?
We're looking for some fold ups and these look pretty strong contenders. Memory and graphics are high up on our needs as our product is highly visual and at the same time data heavy.
veni bibi saltavi
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Nagy Vilmos wrote: Memory and graphics are high up
A computer can never have too much memory, nice and well. But what do you need high end graphics for? Are you really all writing graphics engines and blasting out as many high resolution frames per second as you can?
Nagy Vilmos wrote: highly visual and at the same time data heavy.
That sounds more like drawing graphs in some reports to impress some old men in suits. Any chipset should render something like that and not start sweating over it.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
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The UI is painting a lot of graphics and having a good graphics card - maybe not gamer quality, but good - makes it much smoother. With gammer machines, having a good spec means that they're generally good for developmnt.
veni bibi saltavi
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Yep! The "default" graphics that come with most machines is rubbish - shared memory and cheap chipset.
I upgraded mine to a GTX660Ti and Windows is a whole load smoother (as well as not introducing more bottlenecks on the main RAM)
And it plays games as well! 
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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The most complex game I play is Colossal Adventure
veni bibi saltavi
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Shirley, you mean Colossal Adventure XXIV 3D VR Turbo GTI?
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
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Ha! My old GTX 570 gave smoke signs and just an hour ago the mail man brought me a new GTX 1070! A wonder that the dead 570 really kept working as a standard graphics card until now. A VGA zombie.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
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Nagy Vilmos wrote: The UI is painting a lot of graphics and having a good graphics card
So the person actually using the app will have an equivalent system also?
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The specs might be OK.
But I prefer an oldstyle large and moveable keyboard, a mouse (don't like those touchpads), and a large monitor for development. So why using a laptop then which is usually more expensive than a comparable desktop system?
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In the office and at home I have external keyboard, mouse and an extra monitor. That said, we all spend time working in different locations including on client sites, so having a good laptop is more than worth the extra cost.
veni bibi saltavi
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OK Nagy, buy the PS4 Pro in order to play Persona 5. 
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Where laptops have a big problem is drive bays,
next yes the graphics is good if it cooks it's expensive and choices limited.
Built-in keyboard, again it's good but is it set out the way you like it? Built in display, ditto.
Multi display is possible but finicky, same for direct plug USB and connectivity in general.
The box is limiting for dev, and you're stuck with only the plugs it came with.
Installing Signature...
Do not switch off your computer.
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Depending on the job you do the best is a laptop and a native docking station...
You can go to your customer's place without having to synchronize/configure/be_sure_to_have_the_same_software_version anything and when you are at your office you get automatically connected to everything using the DS.
Once I did this I've never looked back.
But of course, all this means you need a high end laptop...
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..my desktop is based on a laptop-CPU, has modest (onboard) graphic capabilites and still has no problems at all with WarCraft or Heroes of the Storm.
If your application is graphic-heavy, then I would assume you'd need something that is DirectX compatible - as that would be the way to optimize graphic output.
The i3 CPU may sound a bit slow, but during games that's not really noticable; found that its mostly memory and the hd-speed that was usually the bottleneck in my particular setup. So the desktop has a SSD card and 16GB memory. Yes, VS needs a lot of it, and it tends to read/write a lot.
That setup is now probably 4 years old, and still outperforms many "full" desktops.
So, you'd have to ask yourself how much of a bottleneck your graphics are, before thinking of optimizing it; otherwise you risc optimizing a part that may not have any impact at all.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: otherwise you risc optimizing a part that may not have any impact at all.
I don't think Nagy would want to go that deep into optimization 
If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't. — Lyall Watson
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Well, I'm using one of these bad boys[^] as my primary dev machine and I absolutely love it. Finally, recompiling C++ code is a relatively painless operation.
This space for rent
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Another thing to look at would be external graphics enclosures. I just ordered myself a new laptop that has everything except the high end graphics card. Instead I'll be ordering myself one, most likely the HP Omen model since it has room for another HD as well, for gaming and serious graphics work.
Unfortunately that does cause the price to spike pretty quick as the enclosures are 3-400$ plus the graphics card.
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Dell - I will never buy from them again, either with mine or the company's money.
Looked at Lenovo, but not that one.
veni bibi saltavi
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A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of gin? 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Can't believe nobody asked if it was a drinking game. You provide the Gin and I'm in. 
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