On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 8:50 PM, Allen Shaw <al...@twomiceandastrawberry.com> wrote: > Who here is happy with their current development machine? Would you care to > share your hardware specs? > > I'm looking to upgrade my 7-year old desktop for something with a little > more snap. Hopefully under $1000, but it's been ages since I shopped > prices, so clue me in if I'm naive.
Hi Allen, Every year or so I just go to Best Buy and get a cheapo desktop with gigabit ethernet and as much RAM as possible. You can probably find an ASUS or ACER for $600, you don't pay shipping, you get instant gratification and it's easy to take back if there's something wrong with it. They're usually super ugly (like a chrome-plated Star Trek shuttle craft) but the only technical concern I would have is Linux hardware support. Sometimes the cheapo machines have very new and unusual hardware that Linux doesn't quite support yet. But knowing this I always just get something with an Intel chipset with everything onboard. Meaning get Intel video, Intel network, Intel usb, etc. One time I got a machine that didn't recognize the network card. It was some obscure Realtek or some such. I had to download a driver form their site and build it. Otherwise, the cheapo Best Buy machines have always just worked great for me. Incidentally I usually also try to get a 64 bit CPU with Intel VT or AMD-V capability so that I can run 64 bit guests in VMWare Server. This is important for testing all of the different flavors of OS. If someone says your thing doesn't work on Vista SP-this with IE that, then you can replicate that exactly without too much trouble. Mike -- Michael B Allen PHP Active Directory Integration http://www.ioplex.com/plexcel.html _______________________________________________ New York PHP Users Group Community Talk Mailing List http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk http://www.nyphp.org/Show-Participation
