I'm in the middle of looking for a new laptop to go along nicely with web development right now, so I figure I'd share my 2 cents.
Right now, I have a desktop with 2 22" widescreen monitors, but am looking for a laptop to complement it. In my opinion, with web development (and programming in general) screen space is king. Web development _USUALLY_ doesn't take that much CPU power, but you don't want to be lagging behind when you want to get work done, so you can't get a really old processor. I think the ideal solution is to get a portable laptop (13"/15" screen, lightweight) that has a video out of some sort (whether it be HDMI/VGA/DVI). This way, you get the luxury of portability (client meetings, airports/planes, trains, coffee shops), and when you want to work at home, you can hook up a nice 24" monitor, full sized keyboard / mouse and work as if you're on a good desktop. In addition, you don't have 2 separate computers where you have to worry about file syncing (I know, I know, remote repositories - but that's not as easy as it sounds sometimes). The trickiest part in taking this route is finding a laptop that will support the video out well enough on linux to hook up an external screen, which was the problem with my old laptop (I hate SiS). I'm currently looking at the HP Pavilion dm3z which was just released, and am probably just going to hope and pray that Ubuntu works on it because no one seems to have reviewed it yet. On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 9:20 AM, P. Ju (朱漢璇) <pjli...@pobox.com> wrote: > Buy a MacBook/MacBook Pro You will love it. I finally switched after > keeping an eye on them for many yrs. Should've switched sooner! You > get the best of both geek and user-friendly app worlds. I use > Microsoft Office for office tasks, and terminal shell to login to > remote servers or load up git source trees locally. > > PJ > > On 10/19/09, Ajai Khattri <a...@bitblit.net> wrote: > > > > Ive been very happy with a dual-core box I built based on a Shuttle > > barebones kit (shuttle.com). They are very compact but capable machines. > > > > I think being able to run virtual machines is important for web > developers > > so you'll want a box with a decent amount of RAM, maybe 4Gb. Also, two > > monitors is very useful, so maybe look at cards with dual-outputs. > > > > Remember disk is cheap. Memory is cheap. So if you're buying a prebuilt > > box, make sure the diak and memory upgrades aren't a tota' rip. (If they > > are and you still wanna buy, then buy a minimal spec and upgrade > > yourself). > > > > > > -- > > Aj. > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New York PHP Users Group Community Talk Mailing List > > http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk > > > > http://www.nyphp.org/Show-Participation > > > > > -- > Patricia Ju > p...@pobox.com > +1-646-717-3871 > > success = fn(perseverance) > _______________________________________________ > New York PHP Users Group Community Talk Mailing List > http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk > > http://www.nyphp.org/Show-Participation > -- Brian O'Connor
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