Will this work?

Microsoft visual studio 2008 on a netbook. Im thinking about getting rid of my tablet and getting a netbook for mobile use, and Im wondering is doing some light coding would be possible. It wont be my main rig as Ill have my dell, but for those times when I cant use a 17in like a plane or other cramped place it would be nice to get a little work done. The netbooks Ive narrowed it down to are the sony viao P (love the screen and windows 7/vista setup) and the acer aspire one (my mom loves hers). Just wondering if VS 2008 runs on netbooks.

 

Hi there!

VS2008 on a netbook? although there may be issues, i'm sure it can.

I've witnessed a scenario concerning your inquiry. I attended an MSDN session, and the speaker used a netbook. We were suprised, actually.

His netbook was one of the MSI Wind series with 2gb ram and he used it to run VS2008 Team Suite. He also used Virtual PC to demonstrate various programs for his talk.

If ever you'd be getting a netbook for programming, i suggest you get the one with high RAM's (about 2 gig ram) to compensate for the reduced processing speed.

Hope this helped. ^_^

ascii

 

I don’t think a 1.6GHz Atom processor would cut it.. At least not for the Visual Studio 2008 edition. Here are the hardware requirements listed on the Microsoft Visual studio website. It might run, but will take forever to do anything with large projects.
Minimum: 2.0 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, 8 GB HDD
Recommended: 2.6 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, 20 GB HDD

However you might have better luck with the express editions, but that too will run very slowly. I don’t recommend a netbook for programming. If you want portability then buy a 13” regular notebook with a Core 2 Duo.

 

Well, I installed Visual Web Developer Express Edition 2005 on my old Medion, 1GB RAM and 1.6GHz Pentium M (Centrino)
It does run - not perfect though.

(Version 2008 on my Vaio)

I think you'll get away with it if you just type in code - but once you start debugging you may run into trouble.

Also, consider how much HHD space the Visual Suite uses.

I wouldn't have been surprised if the netbook you saw was "streamlined" for that presentation.

 

Pentium M 1.6 is like two times faster than an Atom 1.6GHz I think..

( source)

 

Probably.

i hope i'd be able to try it some time soon, my bro is planning to get a similar netbook. i'd post the result if he would get one.

 

I was thinking the same thing. It would be nice to get a net-book that was powerful enough to run VS2008. A full install of VS2008 Standard edition takes up about 3 GB of space on my desktop...

One thing about performance is that VS hits the hard-drive rather hard and there are recommendations about having a drive that spins at least 7200 RPM. I'm not sure about how SSD's would help in performance though... probably would be able to keep up or even beat traditional drives!

 

Im not looking to do anything serious, just really light coding and nothing long term. Getting a 13in is not an option as I have a more then capable 12in tablet. Im looking for something more mobile then the 12in for lighter use since Ill hopefully be getting a 15in to replace my 17 in for long term mobile use.

edit: Maybe Ill wait for dual core atom CPUs

 

A dual-core processor wouldn't actually help any unless you are coding multithreaded programs. Assuming you aren't, a 1.6 GHz single core and dual-core will perform equally poorly. OK, so the dual-core gets a small advantage from the background processes being on the second core, but pretty much, the second core won't help much. It could even be worse, if the clock speeds are lower for the dual-core versions.

If Atom's really as slow as a 1.2 GHz Pentium III - that's dog slow! My guess is it would still work, though, if a bit slowly. Having a slower processor than recommended usually just means having to wait longer for things to happen. It's only when you're missing a necessary part of the architecture a program needs (such as SSE 3 extensions that were introduced with Pentium 4 Prescott) that you won't be able to run something at all because of the CPU.

 

Honest question here:
If you have a 12" why do you want something smaller?

I find my little 13,3" SZ 100% portable - its about the size of an A4 sheet - so.
(Thicker of course)
12" is smaller.

 

We install a few licences (VS2008 pro) on our MSI Winds at work, and they are running fine. The Sony P is more powerful thatn the MIS WInd in specs, so it should give you no issue. The Aspire One should do just as well, I recommend staying with the HDD version and not the SSD.

cheers ...

 

The background processes being taken care of on one core is exactly why I said I might wait, but then again the acer aspire atom is multi-threaded so that might work just fine. As for comparing it to a p3 1.2ghz, that's just inaccurate outside of the test you see in the link. Ive used my moms acer aspire one 1.6GHz and it runs XP alot better then a p3 could. I'm going to be testing VS2008 tomorrow as Ill be visiting my niece there.

Because carrying around a 12in tablet and a 17in desktop replacement in 1 bag is heavy as well as kills my bag space. Why bring both? well I cant use a 17in on a plane or other tight places, and you cant do long term computing on a netbook (e.g. 8 hours+ multitasking). Why not just ditch everything and stick with the 12in? while my tablet is nice it is no where near as powerful as my dell for gaming or power use. As of now I'm looking at the newer edition of the MSI 1651 with quad core support and 9800mGS for my power use/gaming and the netbook for my lighter duty tasks when using a 15.4in is not acceptable or even possible.

Thanks! Ill be testing vs2008 on my moms netbook to see for myself. The only way I would go for a SSD is if I go for the sony, but I think Im looking at the acer more due to price, better CPU, and non ssd HDD. Now if the sony offered a 1.6 or better if wouldnt be a contest at all.

 

I'd very much like to know your results on this, as I am on the fence on whether to pick up the Aspire One based off of how reasonably well it runs VS2008.

 

Ill report back then .

 

Here you go. VS2008 works great on my moms acer aspire one, and it should run better on mine when it comes cause I keep a much cleaner partition then she does.

 

Nice! I stopped by Best Buy today to take another look at the one they have on display to see if I could be comfortable writing on it. The keyboard is a bit cramped, but I believe I could get used to that. The screen was very good too. But...

Then I turned around and saw the HP Mini 1000 on display as well, which had a larger keyboard which I was instantly comfortable with. The downside is that the Mini 1000 on display had a 16 GB SSD drive which I am hesitent on getting due to the possibility of not fitting Windows 7, VS2008, Office 2003, plus my projects.

Anyway, after saying all that, I'll be holding off for a while on getting a net-book. I might end up going for an 11 or 12-inch notebook with Windows 7 preloaded on it. The screen-size is what I value in a portable computer, alongside disk-space.

 

Couldn't you buy a netbook and swap in a large HDD?