Laptop Rig, specs for programmers

Question

I'm not interested in a brand recommendation for a laptop. I'm wondering about the actual specifications of a laptop to do the job and do it well.

I work primarily in the Microsoft stack and moments like now I have a few instances of Visual Studio open, Sql Management Studio, Twitter clients and on occasion many browser tabs.

As such I've been obsessed with RAM - will 8GB of RAM really do that much more for me or is it less of a difference than processor performance.

So if one were to ask for a list of priorities on laptop components, how would you list the following subsystems:

CPU

Memory

Disk

Other (Video?)

I've always prioritized in the following order:

1. Memory

2. CPU

3. Disk

4. Other

Any insight specific to the life of a developer?

Answer 1

Move 3. Disk higher on your list - it is the slowest component of notebooks. Go and get SSD drive - your Visual Studio will open in ~1 sec. You can't get it even with 24GB of RAM.

Instead of a 'classic' SSD drive you might consider a hybrid SSD drive - this is a drive with plates and a large NAND cache - it combines a storage space of a standard plate drive (0.5TB) with a near-SSD performance. It all boils down to your budget, speed requirements and if you're going to use your notebook on batteries a lot (then SSD will give you more time comparing to hybrid)

CPU - i5, i7

RAM - 6GB should be more then enough - I have 2 VMs running with no problem

HDD - SSD / Hybrid SSD

Video - Get a full HD display (1920x1080 or 1920x1200) - you will need space for your code.

WiFi n + gigabit LAN (in most notebook anyway)

Invest in large battery if you plan to code unplugged. There's little point in having a stunning machine without juice.

Answer 2

I would agree with @Jakub, the laptops we have at work are okish, but it slows to a stop fairly often because of disk IO (encrypted 5400 RPM HDs suck). I don't think it's really an ordering question but what's the minimum acceptable for each category. Picking to max the CPU but not upgrading the Disk wouldn't really help build a decent developer laptop.

For specifics I think that something in the general vicinity of the following will work fairly well (obviously you can spend more to get more):

i5 (or equivalent)

8 GB RAM

SSD Drive and/or dual drives

17+ screen (unless you plan to hook it up to a second monitor fairly often), I typically get the better video card option since it's fairly cheap and laptop upgrades for this are more or less a nogo. Not something I want to be a bottleneck.

With a dual drive instead of SSD you should be able to find this in the ~$1200US range. From the list above the first think I would considering bumping up would be the RAM (as always depends upon your budget), although you are probably at the point of diminishing returns once you get above 12 or 16 GB.

Answer 3

You want to make sure that the CPU that you gets supports hardware virtualization. It will improve your experience of using virtual machines, and if you aren't using them, you should.

Answer 4

Move 4. Other (video) higher up (unless you need to run programs with high requirements for both memory, CPU and disk). You are probably going to spend a lot of time looking at code.

If you plan to use the laptop's monitor, you would want a monitor with high resolution (much higher than the "standard" resolution of 1366x768 which many laptops offer).

Answer 5

One thing not on your list, that I found very important when using notebooks for software development is COOLING. Make sure to check with other users of your selected brand that there is no overheating problems.

Believe me, this is sometimes a more significant factor than anything else.