need some advice

Hello:

I currently own a Dell XPS 1710 (3 years+) and I am very happy with it and with the Dell support overall for that matter. However, I want to get a faster laptop.

I am a java developer, I worked only on Windows and a bit on Linux so far, and I use a lot eclipse and other programs occasionally: Office 2007, Dreamweaver, Visual Studio 2008 and others.

I want to get a 17" laptop with a 1920x1200 resolution. I checked out the Dell website and there seems to be nothing out there like my laptop. This resolution is supported only by Alienware models (too flashy and bulky for my taste and I heard they have problems), Dell Precision Mobile Workstation (way too expensive) or other 15.6" models (the screen is too small).


On the other hand - and this is why I posted here - the 17" macbook pro looks very promising, I used it a bit in the apple store and I really like it. It's light - I like that a lot since I have to carry my laptop to work every day - I like the screen, its price is close to my budget, it has OSX which is essentially Unix (and I have to admit I kind of hate windows) but...

There is something that keeps me from making the jump. I am not too sure how am I going to use it. So far I've done development on windows. I guess I could use the java tools such as eclipse on OSX but I need to install Windows (Parallels or VM Ware) to use office 2007 and VS 2008 plus another zillion little things that probably don't have mac versions. Then I am asking myself - do I really need a mac?

From what I've seen on this forum, running windows on mac has its own perils (overheating, CPUs downgrading the speed) probably due to drivers that are not as performant as the native OSX driver.

So, here I am posting on this forum, looking perhaps for some advice and insight from mac users or others...

Thanks

 

there are mac version for most programs.. i dunno about java development programs.. but "Office 2007, Dreamweaver" have mac version... which you can pay for

other progams eh... dual boot or run in a virtual machine... assuming they'll work well enough.

seems as though you all ready have a bunch of money invested in windows software...

if all you really want is the screen resolution, the 17'' monitor and the "light" laptop.. there are PC companies that make laptops close to that resolution. 1920x1080

the Asus G series comes to mind
or the sony F series

 

MAC's can make terrific development machines.

Not only is Apples java development environment that comes free with OS X great, but you can easily run other JDE's like Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA or many others. Being unix based OS X is a great environment to load all the support services (like db server, web servers etc) too. A lot of unix stuff can run directly on OS X in this respect (Oracle, Websphere, MySql, Apache etc).

And when it comes to testing and debugging there is nothing like a raft of VM's for various Windows and Linux Environments. Vmware Fusion and Parallels are excellent VM's that will allow you to set up various flavors of XP, Vista, W7, IE 6/7/8, FF, Chrome etc for testing various environments.

Just make sure you have plenty of Disk space and RAM. I know a number of folks that have ditched their free corporate PC's in favor of a personally purchased MAC for a development environment because they find the MAC so much more productive. They say their build times are dramatically faster on the MAC, in addition to just being a great development environment. And I'm not saying a PC can't be great for development or that a MAC is always better - just that a few people I know have found it better in their case.

So a MBP is worth looking at.

 

take a look on the netbeans website. It supports, java, c++, php, ruby and a few others. Dreamweaver also comes for mac. Maya is also available. Even xampp for mac exists. macs have come a long way since their "Dark side" days.

 

Eclipse one of the best free software

 

This is very interesting and it is the kind of information I was looking for.

 

I'd believe build times being faster given same hardware...(java always has been a bit friendlier for *nix) but I would reasonably doubt "dramatically" without some benchmarks.
(I'd love to see them if someone has them...)

All things said and done it should work, as long as your IT group (that being yourself if you are freelance) support apple OS X.

However, you might want to wait for a hardware refresh on the mac side.

If performance is important to you, PCs are now shipping with the new core processors from Intel. You might want to wait until Apple chooses to bump up a tech notch.

 

I don't have any official benchmarks, I only go by what a few of our developers are telling me for a particular application and that is using Eclipse under XP vs Eclipse under OS X (similar processors but 2gb under XP and 4gb RAM under OS X) they are seeing 4-5x the build speed under OS X. Who knows what other factors are involved but this is one anecdotal case of what I would call "dramatic". And this isn't a case of 1 second vs 5 seconds its a case of 20 minutes vs a couple of hours for a build.

 

Well, lets be fair... you are placing a 64-bit (at least partially if OSX version is less recent, and fully if its up-to-date) OS with 4GB against a 32-bit OS with 2GB in a memory-hungry environment.

Also... I'd be interested to hear what developers think is a "similar processor".
Developers tend to span the knowledge gap from "hardware genius" to "new at this" as I know a few who think a "233 Pentium" and a 2(.)13 Core2duo are "close".

You also might have a few people who WANT it to be 4-5x faster.
(I have users who swear their ancient powerPC mac is faster than an core2duo windows 7 machine in almost anything.)

I'd like to see a direct comparison between 64-bit Win7 and the most recent version of OSX with similar if not the same hardware.
(This is the OPs actual situation save the PC will have a superior processor right this minute.)

You have to admit... 4-5x faster with the same hardware sounds bogus...

 

While we are talking 2.x ghz C2D processors all around, I admit we're talking a POS $800 corporate PC against a well designed premium PC costing at least twice that with more memory and a more modern OS.

As I mentioned, this is anecdotal and imperfect. This case may be extreme in degree (due to uncontrolled variables) but I believe it. In general I've heard from many developers that on a given piece of hardware you'll be able to get more performance from a *nix OS than a Windows OS. Its also consistent with my personal experience as a developer and an application user.

I can be running OSX with many apps and several VM's with good performance, where an XP box with the same specs is a slug at that point. Vista or W7 may change that picture, but I have not used them as core OS's. I can say from running them in VMs that they have much higher overhead than XP though.

 

Yes, *nix OSs tend to use less ram and cpu time, so it might be noticeable on a Pentium with DDR ram, but on medium to high end core 2/i there's no way you'd be able to tell the difference between a windows 7/vista vs a *nix OS, especially OS X. Given that the windows machine is clean and free of bloatware. OS X doesn't OC your memory or up the rpms on your hard drive. The hardware of a computer is it's potential, no matter how good the OS is, you can't go past that, and windows is pretty fast. If one ran slower than the other on the same hardware its due to a badly written program on one or the other.

You could however argue that your productivity increases on OS X due to a better designed UI and less buggy environment... but not that your builds would compile significantly faster.

And for the OP, Office is iffy in OS X as it doesn't offer all the features the windows version does. And Visual Studio is PC only, so it depends if your satisfied with the speed lost from a VM, or having to boot into windows.

 

This is an oxymoron. Windows is bloatware all by itself It's enough to compare the system requirements between XP & Vista and/or Win 7 to see that.

If I buy a mac I will get back to you for sure with more exact numbers when it comes to building/compile Java (and not only) applications.

 

The system requirements for windows 7 and OS X are nearly the same. Also, windows 7 and Vista treat system memory like a cache, and will seem to use significantly more ram then they really are. Operation Systems have little impact on speed, its mostly dependent on how efficient the code is written for each platform. Because a program has to be re-written for each operating system, large differences are sometimes apparent but in most cases has little to do with the operation system, and more to do that one of the programs was written poorly. However its interesting to note that windows 7 has significantly faster networking speeds than xp or vista. Some network application benchmarks were 50% faster on windows 7, than xp or vista.

 

xhibit, here are the links to the requirements:

XP: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314865

Win 7: http://windows.microsoft.com/systemrequirements

Please note the RAM requirements:

XP: At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)
Win 7: 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
Windows XP Mode requires an additional 1 GB of RAM, an additional 15 GB of available hard disk space

Are you calling these 'nearly the same'?

ok, perhaps win 7 is not bloatware (I was teasing you a bit) but you have to admit that win 7 requires more resources than win XP and hardware always works in their favor.

Anyway, coming back to the original question, I talked to other people and they seem to be happy with the combination: Mac OSX and Win on a VM.

 

I was comparing windows 7 to osx. But requirements don't seem to matter much when windows 7 performs just about the same as XP, or even faster in some benchmarks, esspecially networked applications. Not to mention 64bit preformance gains over 32bit XP (64bit XP is rare). It would be hard to buy a PC these days that doesn't meet wondows 7 requirements. If your going to use windows on a Mac, is should be windows 7, for maximum preformance.

 

yes, windows 7 is the future. One thing i heard though is that windows xp yields better results in battery life. That's why lots of netbooks use it. However, lately, almost all netbooks being released are coming with w7. May be the drivers have been updated so as to decrease the power consumtion under battery mode.

 

Psst... it's known as Operating System.

 

With java this is not the case. Java code can be run on any OS without modification whatsoever. And the OP has been talking about java so it makes this argument moot.

 

have you looked at the newer studio xps's?

 

Yes. The problem is that I want an I7 CPU and a screen with a 1920x1200 resolution. The only Dell laptops at this resolution are Alienware & Dell Precision M6x00. I really like the Dell Precision Mobile Workstation but it is expensive. HP had a model at this resolution but I think it is as expensive as the Dell if not more expensive. It seems that laptops with screens at this resolution are way more expensive than the other models.

I also looked at Sager. They have a beast like the Dell Precision one, NP9280, but I got burned with a Sager notebook - I had hard-drive connector problems and I don't like their service. Because I live in Canada I had to send the laptop by mail, I had to drive to US and then mail it from there, and drive back to pick it up. It was a pain.

Right now I really like the Macbookpro but I decided to wait until they update the cpus.

 

The studio xps 16 has both i7 and 1920x1200 screen. I just ordered one for a relative so i'm positive.

Edit: I just checked online to confirm this

 

Can you send me the link? All Studio XPS 16 models that I've seen have 1920x1080 resolution. The spec also says 1920x1080: http://www.dell.com/us/en/business/...d.aspx?refid=laptop-studio-xps-16&s=bsd&cs=04

 

Oh my bad, didn't realize you meant x1200

 

120 pixels is not a big difference

But when you program it matters. If you used Dreamweaver you know what I mean.