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You mention IntelliJ IDEA and Win10, so I'm guessing you want a Windows based Java dev env. 4Gb RAM won't be enough for that. I use a 4 year old Samsung Ultrabo

You mention IntelliJ IDEA and Win10, so I'm guessing you want a Windows based Java dev env. 4Gb RAM won't be enough for that. I use a 4 year old Samsung Ultrabook: i5, 6Gb RAM, 500Gb disk, Win8. I'm building a cloud system with Angular GUI, RethinkDB and Python/C++ servers using Visual C++ and PyCharm. I can't run all that at once. Chrome, especially running dev tools, and PyCharm are real memory hogs. I'd love to switch to a Surface Pro with 16Gb RAM, but it's too expensive. My view: 8Gb RAM minimum for a dev env.

drKarl 10y ago
Thanks, that's the kind of feedback I need. For developing while not travelling I currently use a Macbook Pro 2015 with 16Gb of RAM and I'm happy with it, and I've previously used Windows or Linux desktops and laptops, so I'm OS agnostic, I can be productive with any OS (on Windows I'd just install cygwin with console2, or cmder, or lately Babun which is a preconfigured cygwin with a package manager). I remember the time years ago when I was programming with 1Gb of RAM (that was the normal for computers at the time) and it was a painful experience with Eclipse and other tools. As computers evolved with Moore's Law, 2Gb was a better experience and I think 4Gb was fine at the time. Then 8Gb should definitely be good and 16Gb is plenty even to run VMs. Thinking that it would not be for a full time developing environment, just to be able to do some work while travelling in a long trip where I don't want to bring an expensive laptop like a Macbook Pro, I thought 4Gb might be enough, so your feedback is really appreciated.
- syntheticnature 10y ago
  Also worth noting the Z8300 is an Atom device. Here's a comparison of the processor in these devices vs. what I believe to be the lowest-end processor from a 2015 MBP: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-5257U-vs-Intel-Atom-x5-x5-Z8300#performance http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-5257U-vs-Intel-Atom-x5...

drKarl 10y ago

Thanks, that's the kind of feedback I need. For developing while not travelling I currently use a Macbook Pro 2015 with 16Gb of RAM and I'm happy with it, and I've previously used Windows or Linux desktops and laptops, so I'm OS agnostic, I can be productive with any OS (on Windows I'd just install cygwin with console2, or cmder, or lately Babun which is a preconfigured cygwin with a package manager). I remember the time years ago when I was programming with 1Gb of RAM (that was the normal for computers at the time) and it was a painful experience with Eclipse and other tools. As computers evolved with Moore's Law, 2Gb was a better experience and I think 4Gb was fine at the time. Then 8Gb should definitely be good and 16Gb is plenty even to run VMs. Thinking that it would not be for a full time developing environment, just to be able to do some work while travelling in a long trip where I don't want to bring an expensive laptop like a Macbook Pro, I thought 4Gb might be enough, so your feedback is really appreciated.

syntheticnature 10y ago
Also worth noting the Z8300 is an Atom device. Here's a comparison of the processor in these devices vs. what I believe to be the lowest-end processor from a 2015 MBP: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-5257U-vs-Intel-Atom-x5-x5-Z8300#performance http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-5257U-vs-Intel-Atom-x5...