4 ms·

The thing that put me off the original was the 8gb max RAM... surely a developer edition would allow for more?

lugg 12y ago
Chalk it up to planned obsolescence for the stepchild broadwell, ddr3, and msata. Just wait for skylake they won't really be able to dodge it for another year. By they I mean all the relevant windows laptop manufacturers.
Athas 12y ago
I got a ThinkPad X250 a few weeks ago. Originally I was hesitant, as it is also limited to 8GiB of memory, but I realised that development need not actually use more than that (and indeed, I never do). I basically need to run just Emacs, a compiler and a browser, and although both GHC and browsers are memory hogs, 8GiB is plenty. Whenever I need to do really intense things, like benchmarking, simulations or large-scale testing, I always want to use a remote beefy machine anyway. I know that some developers have a need to run a large number of local virtual machines, but I do not really understand why, to be honest. I use virtual machines too, but remotely, and mostly automatically for continuous integration. I don't think programming is inherently particularly resource-consuming.
- maccard 12y ago
  Depends on what you do. I work on a large c++ codebase, and running a full rebuild chews through about 20GB of ram, and almost 100% cpu utilisation on my workstation, for about 15 minutes.
- dkns 12y ago
  My friend's wife is java programmer. She uses a thinkpad with 16 gb afaik. From what he told me she opens up like 5 different java projects in eclipse and 16gb is gone.
- creshal 12y ago
  FYI, the X250 unofficially allows 16 GiB RAM. 16 GiB sticks are rather new (came out after the X250) and are still insanely expensive, though (around 400 dollars, last I checked). > I use virtual machines too, but remotely, and mostly automatically for continuous integration. I'd love to do that, but our internet is far too crappy for that – we upgraded our offices from 2 Mbit/s to 10 MBit/s last year, and there are no faster options even if we wanted to –, hence I have to carry the VMs on my laptop (X230 with 16 GiB RAM and 2 SSDs).
- michaelt 12y ago
  I know that some developers have a need to run a large number of local virtual machines, but I do not really understand why, to be honest. If you're developing a website, and you want to test on several versions of Windows and IE. Or if you're developing something that needs to work on several versions of Linux and you want to make sure it works right on several different distros. Or if you're developing something that uses Java on Mac and you want to make sure it works if the user has Java 6 from Apple, or Java 8 from Oracle, or both. Obviously, there are ways to struggle through if you don't have much RAM - for example you can run 1 VM at a time and be constantly stopping and starting them. But if testing is a PITA, and it means you do a day's work before you test properly and find there's a problem, you might have wasted that day's work :)
- LaSombra 12y ago
  I work with Java development support so I need as much RAM as possible. I need to test load balancing configurations, transaction troubleshooting, heap dump analysis and so on. VMs are an essential part of my day-to-day activities. 8GiB let's me run Firefox and Chrome and at least 2 distinct projects. And I'm not even talking about web development troubleshooting which is a pain in itself.

lugg 12y ago

Chalk it up to planned obsolescence for the stepchild broadwell, ddr3, and msata. Just wait for skylake they won't really be able to dodge it for another year. By they I mean all the relevant windows laptop manufacturers.

Athas 12y ago

I got a ThinkPad X250 a few weeks ago. Originally I was hesitant, as it is also limited to 8GiB of memory, but I realised that development need not actually use more than that (and indeed, I never do). I basically need to run just Emacs, a compiler and a browser, and although both GHC and browsers are memory hogs, 8GiB is plenty. Whenever I need to do really intense things, like benchmarking, simulations or large-scale testing, I always want to use a remote beefy machine anyway. I know that some developers have a need to run a large number of local virtual machines, but I do not really understand why, to be honest. I use virtual machines too, but remotely, and mostly automatically for continuous integration. I don't think programming is inherently particularly resource-consuming.

maccard 12y ago
Depends on what you do. I work on a large c++ codebase, and running a full rebuild chews through about 20GB of ram, and almost 100% cpu utilisation on my workstation, for about 15 minutes.
dkns 12y ago
My friend's wife is java programmer. She uses a thinkpad with 16 gb afaik. From what he told me she opens up like 5 different java projects in eclipse and 16gb is gone.
creshal 12y ago
FYI, the X250 unofficially allows 16 GiB RAM. 16 GiB sticks are rather new (came out after the X250) and are still insanely expensive, though (around 400 dollars, last I checked). > I use virtual machines too, but remotely, and mostly automatically for continuous integration. I'd love to do that, but our internet is far too crappy for that – we upgraded our offices from 2 Mbit/s to 10 MBit/s last year, and there are no faster options even if we wanted to –, hence I have to carry the VMs on my laptop (X230 with 16 GiB RAM and 2 SSDs).
michaelt 12y ago
I know that some developers have a need to run a large number of local virtual machines, but I do not really understand why, to be honest. If you're developing a website, and you want to test on several versions of Windows and IE. Or if you're developing something that needs to work on several versions of Linux and you want to make sure it works right on several different distros. Or if you're developing something that uses Java on Mac and you want to make sure it works if the user has Java 6 from Apple, or Java 8 from Oracle, or both. Obviously, there are ways to struggle through if you don't have much RAM - for example you can run 1 VM at a time and be constantly stopping and starting them. But if testing is a PITA, and it means you do a day's work before you test properly and find there's a problem, you might have wasted that day's work :)
LaSombra 12y ago
I work with Java development support so I need as much RAM as possible. I need to test load balancing configurations, transaction troubleshooting, heap dump analysis and so on. VMs are an essential part of my day-to-day activities. 8GiB let's me run Firefox and Chrome and at least 2 distinct projects. And I'm not even talking about web development troubleshooting which is a pain in itself.