What's Your Work Computer Like?
That may seem like an odd post title, but trust me, there's a good reason for it. As I get to do more and more personal work, I've had the chance to compare the different computers I work on. Here's a glimpse of the systems that I currently develop with.
At work, IBM T42 laptop:
- Windows XP;
- Intel Mobile Pentium M 1.7GHz;
- 1GB of RAM;
- 40GB hard drive;
- A junk load of security software (ThinkVantage (IBM), McAfee anti-virus and firewall and other proprietary network software).
At home, custom-made desktop computer:
- Windows Vista or Ubuntu (Linux);
- AMD 9600 Phenom 2.3GHz quad-core processor;
- 4GB of RAM;
- 250GB hard drive;
- PNY 512MB GeForce 8800 GT video card;
- Basic personal security suite.
On both of these machines I run (CF)Eclipse, WinSQL (free multi-DB client), a file browser and a couple of web browser windows (Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome for cross-browser compatibility checks). I also run a ColdFusion 8 dev server and MySQL database instance on both, for local development.
If you've been following me on Twitter (me!), you might've seen some of the frustration I've started to experience at work. In all honesty, Eclipse isn't really to blame; actually, it's running really great right now on my home computer! However, every once in a while, Eclipse hangs on my work laptop. Or WinSQL does. Actually, sometimes it's my CF server. Regardless, it just seems like I'm asking too much of it. Of course, I can't expect some bottom-of-the-line laptop to compete with my gaming box, but there is a point where I feel like I'm being counter-productive.
And this brings me back to the subject of this post. I couldn't find anywhere what an "average" development computer would look like, so I thought I might ask the wonderful ColdFusion community for it's help. I didn't want to setup anything formal, like a survey, for a couple of reasons. First, I imagine there are so many different possible configurations that I can't see how I could clearly create options for it in a survey; and second, I'm too afraid I'd get hurt if I don't choose the right survey software (just kidding, Ray).
So, I bring to you the very unofficial Critical-Web survey (it's not a survey!) of work computers! Please, leave a comment and let us know what you're currently working with. Provide as little or as much detail as you like. When I feel like there's been enough comments I'll close the polls and make a follow-up post with whatever findings I can... well, find.
WORK
Windows XP
2.5 GHz Core 2 Duo
3 GB RAM
120 GB Hard drive (not that it matters)
Eclipse with CFEclipse, Flex Builder, and a handful of other plugins
SQL Server Management Studio
CF 8 & SQL Server Express (though they are hardly ever running)
McAfee and Lotus Notes 8 (based on eclipse) = resource hogs
HOME
Macbook w/ Mac OS 10.5
2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo
4GB RAM (Corsair cas4 low latency)
250 GB Hard drive
Same eclipse config as above
CF 8 multi-server config
MySQL
VMware Fusion running Windows XP (1GB RAM) & SQL Server Express
I don't game. My mac outperforms my work laptop, hands down. I credit this to three things: 1) the quality of the mobo in my mac is better quality and more efficient at handling data, 2) Mac OS is Unix, and thus, does a much better job at managing memory usage, and 3) I don't have McAfee and Notes 8 running on it.
Until a couple weeks ago, I had only 2 GB RAM in my mac. During this time, I had only 512 MB RAM dedicated to the virtual machine, 1.5 GB for the host. When I upgraded to 4GB RAM, I noticed a huge performance gain when using Flex Builder (again, plugin installation on top of eclipse). Eclipse actually starts in approx. 5 seconds.
Believe it or not I actually had to fight to get 1GB of ram (they wanted to give me 512MB, which is a joke...). My laptop is upgradeable to 2GB so I'll see if I can find a stick in a scrap pile or something. I also feel that having a multi-core system would give a big advantage (not necessarily quad-core, that's a little overkill :P), especially since so many applications are running at the same time. Thoughts?
You really don't have a choice when it comes to multi-core systems these days. The Intel Core 2 Duo is pretty much the standard across the board. The reasons the Dual Core processors are doing so well, is that they are not only faster, but more efficient as well. A Pentium 4 3.0 GHz consumes 89W, where a Core 2 Duo clocked at the same speed only consumes 65W. 3 years ago, the Pentium 4 3.4 GHz HT was all the rage, but has since faded away to slower clocked, more energy efficient, multi-core processors.
For what we do building we apps, editing text, we'll probably never be able to tell what benefit a multi-core processor provides. The multi-core comes as a benefit from the processors being more energy efficient. I think you do see an advantage to using multi-core processors if you're 1) gaming or 2) running virtual machines.
Memory is key, b/c if you're constantly using virtual memory, you're pegging disk I/O, and you're processor b/c you're moving data data between physical memory and your hard drive, all the time. You know what else is Disk I/O intensive? Databases. And if you're building apps locally, you're also running a DB locally, and all your resources are competing against each other.
Good luck on getting upgraded.
Anyways, thanks again for the insight. I think I'm trying to see where the bottlenecks are occurring. I'm supposedly scheduled to get an upgrade near the beginning of 2009, I guess I'll just wait and hope for something better ;).