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Hardware choices

I'm in a quandry (and not because I haven't posted in a while - I have a number of posts in draft form that need to come).

I'm looking at new machines but I'm unsure. Do I invest in a better server to handle better VMs and possibly Hyper-V and then simply RDP into it when needed or do I look at a laptop for more VPCs?

Ideally it would be both - but economics these days limit the potential. Server hasn't been upgraded for 4 years (Dell SC400) but neither really has the laptop (Dell5150)

Platform doesn't matter these days. Thoughts?
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Unknown said…
Laptops are more expensive and not upgradable. I'd buy a desktop unless you actually need a new laptop.

Regarding platform to choose, I'm assuming most of your clients run Windows.

If you do hardware support, and don't already have a mac, you might want to get one. They are getting more popular all the time. Where I used to live, you could find a windows "mechanic" under every shadetree. There was only one company offering mac support, and they didn't do it very well. So I bought an intel mac.

I recently had a friend who got tired of vista and replaced it with ubuntu. After he spent a day struggling to get VMWare to compile on it, he reinstalled vista. Linux is fine for servers, but still not a very good choice for a desktop system.
November 23, 2008 at 10:45 PM
Andrew MacNeill said…
Hey Brian - ended up with a new laptop after all...definitely necessary but I think I'll still be looking at a new server shortly primarily for VS 2008 Hyper-V.

The laptop is on Vista - interesting for sure. Not sure if I'll go back to XP or not. I have an older machine running Ubuntu right now and it's not bad for someone who knows what they're doing.
December 4, 2008 at 5:31 AM
Eric Selje said…
Have you considered any sort of hosted solution, or even Azure? I'd like to hear of real world experiences with these.
December 11, 2008 at 9:33 PM
Andrew MacNeill said…
Hi Eric- not really interested in a hosted solution - although a colleague did offer one up.

The problem with hosted is that I have to ensure internet connectivity at all time.
December 15, 2008 at 5:00 AM
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