best notebook for a developer

hi everyone,

i just want to have your opinions. i am programmer working with visual studio usually.i prefer notebooks more than pc. so i am looking for a new one?

but what would you suggest in order to get best performans? of course criteria is cost/performans

display:

in my opinion less than 15 inc not good but do you think 16,17 even 18 is better?

cpu:

i5 is enough or i7 720 or 820 ?

ram:

i think 4 gb ddr3 is optimum but 8 would be great for sure

harddisk:

do you think 5400rpm and 7200rpm has huge difference?

graphic card:

i think its less neccessary for vs development.

so far my favorites are acordding to cost/performans

hp envy 15 : i7 720, 8gb ram max 16gb, ati 4830 1gb, 500gb hdd (7200rpm),6 cell battery,9 cell additional = 1490 euro in europe

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/s...odexp/hhoslp/psg/notebooks/ENVY/ENVY15_series

dell studio xps :english : http://configure.euro.dell.com/dell...en&m_30=322462&oc=N00X6502&rbc=N00X6502&s=dhs

germany: http://configure2.euro.dell.com/del...=N4XX1602&l=de&oc=N04X6502&rbc=N04X6502&s=bsd

PS, in europe, there is 400 euro difference between hp envy and dell studio xps 16. thats why i was thinking to get dell but after i read comments here, troubles people encountered, i was little discouraged.

what do u think?

 

I've been programming in Visual Studio 2008 for the past few months on the notebook in my sig with its "outdated" tech without any problem, though your performance will vary depending on the type of programs.

Display:
Your own personal preference. I chose a 17" because I also play games, plus I like having the screen almost as large as my old desktop monitor (a 19") even though this one is much higher resolution. Just more room to multitask.

CPU:
My older Core 2 Duo is more than enough for the 200-300 line programs I've been writing. They're global and local sequence alignments so they do quite a bit of computation as the input size increases (quadratic efficiency to be precise). An i5 should be able to blow my C2D away, especially if you multithread your programs as I'm planning to (a built in feature in VB).

RAM:
Depending on your programs, I think the speed of the RAM would be more important than the size beyond 4 GB. Running my program uses about 60 MB of RAM with VS using about 40 MB, so unless you're processing extraordinarily large amounts of data, 4 GB DDR3 should suit your needs just fine.

HD:
Again depends on your programs; if your program reads in a substantial amount of data from the drive, then the faster the better. I would get the 7200 RPM drives just for the speed increase for your notebook's overall performance since you'll notice the difference there more than when programming.

GPU:
I am not familiar with any technologies (open source or otherwise) that allow the system to take advantage of GPU processing power when running a program in VB, so this should not be a factor when deciding which notebook to get (unless you're like me and would like to play games as well).

I can't speak about any of the problems the SXPS has been having as I don't own nor have I ever seen one in person.

Looking at your choices, I'd say that if you're programs are really computationally heavy and you can multithread them, the i7 with its 8 threads will suit you well in the long run. Otherwise, it comes down to personal preference (for the look of the machine) and any desire you have to play games (the 4830 in the Envy would perform a bit better), though I can't help but think that the Envy's price is inflated due to the 8 GB DDR3.

Hope this helps.

 

I think it's funny how people don't know what "pc" means. "personal computer". That would include desktops, laptops, netbooks, ipads, iPhones, any sort of personal computing machine falls into "pc" so the whole "pc vs. Mac" is completely incorrect. It should be windows vs. Osx

 

I agree with you and I know that already but the usage in real life indicates desktop pcs. i dont think anyone thinks notebook or mac when you say pc . its like when you say memory, you think about ram. people are just lazy to say desktop pc, instead they say pc shortly.
PS, i dont believe your lesson is neccessary. because anyone who is on that forum has at least base knowledge.
Regards.