Laptops with Big RAM?

Fubari wonders: "Anybody know when laptops over 4gb might be coming out? Some of the dev-tools I want to run are just obscene RAM-pigs. On the desktop I'm using now (Win2003), it sucks up 1.6gb just to boot. By the time I log in and start doing work, it is stretching 2Gb. Move that to Vista, add a VM-Ware session or two, and I'm worried I'll be pushing 4Gb. I'm torn between buying a 4Bb-max laptop now, or some mini-desktop that can fit in a set of luggage wheels. A friend of mine suggested something like this, but my first choice would be something designed to be portable. Any suggestions?"

Comments

Easy Answer: May

[ZachPruckowski]

You can get a Santa Rosa platform Centrino chipset in May, which will allow for 4 GB of RAM, with 2 x 2 GB sticks. However, 2 GB SODIMMs aren't cheap...

When you're doing this sort of work...

[SECProto]

Doing work this memory-intensive is probably much better suited to the desktop. Windows XP (home edition at least) doesn't support more than 3gb of memory, and I've never seen a laptop with more than 2gb of RAM preinstalled. Your friend was probably right - a computer on wheels or some similar idea would be more effective, or more practical at least. It will also leave you with much more choice for upgrades.

Re:When you're doing this sort of work...

[SECProto]

The link in the article works now, although it didnt when I first posted. If you have a link to a place to buy a system with 8 GB of ram, where does the "ask" part of "ask slashdot" come in?

Re:When you're doing this sort of work...

[Imagix]

My MacBook Pro came with 3 GB ....

Re:When you're doing this sort of work...

[Kancept]

XP Pro will address up to 4GB, but it's 4GB total. If you have 4GB installed, you get that minus whatever the graphics card and such have. So a 512 MB graphics card will leave 3.5 GB of that 4GB you installed. It's a waste. It's why we only upgraded our systems to 3GB. Reminds me of a BeOS problem...

Why not get one

[Timesprout]

with a few smaller ewes instead?

Re:Why not get one

[nick_davison]

with a few smaller ewes instead? Speaking as someone who grew up on the border of Wales, can I recommend goats? They're like sheep but with the added convenience of handlebars.

Re:Why not get one

[shadowbearer]

They're like sheep but with the added convenience of handlebars.

  Must. Resist. Obvious. Joke.

SB

Re:Why not get one

[heinousjay]

I'm pretty sure what you replied to was the obvious joke.

Re:Why not get one

[shadowbearer]

  Yeah, well sometimes the moderators need the reminder... just ensuring ;)

SB

Re:Dell?

[illegalcortex]

Did you bother even looking at the summary? The poster clearly asks about laptops with MORE than 4GB of RAM.

Harder than you think

[HardCase]

You've got a couple of problems to deal with. The first is power consumption - two 2GB modules will consume a crazy amount of power. It's quite surprising just how much power a couple of modules require. The second is space. Current DRAM components are too large to fit 2GB worth on a single SODIMM. Take a look at the space on a DDR2 UDIMM and you'll see that there's almost no extra room on one of them.

2GB SODIMMs are built - I've worked on some creative designs that stacked DRAM components to achieve the necessary density, but the modules aren't suited for laptops because they're too thick and a notebook can't provide the necessary cooling.

It seems to me that you're a year or two ahead of technology, I'm afraid.

-h-

Re:Harder than you think

[HardCase]

Oh crap, here I am replying to my own post. Where I said 2GB, please substitute 4GB instead. D'oh!

Re:Harder than you think

[Lost Race]

Oh crap, here I am replying to my own post.

There's never been anything wrong with replying to your own posting when you have something new to add, unless of course you use a sock puppet to do it.

Re:Harder than you think

[Chryana]

I verified recently if RAM was a power hog on a laptop, and the consensus was that it did not make that much of a difference (although I will concede that 4GB is a lot). One benchmark was stating that doubling the RAM from 512MB to 1GB reduced the battery life by 8 minutes, which is not too bad on a total battery life of over 2 hours and a half. Additionally, having more RAM, especially when it is used, may result in lower hard disk usage, and the hard drive draws far more power than memory (it was placed second only to the display in terms of power consumption). So yes, there will definitely be a difference in terms of battery life if he installs 4GB, but given his memory requirements, it may turn out to be better than to abuse the swap file constantly. Also, if he really uses that much RAM it will be much more pleasant for him to use his computer than to wait wait wait while the computer is crawling, constantly swapping content in and out of the page file.

Re:Dell?

[jamieswith]

I think so far the comments missed the point.

He's not looking for a laptop WITH 4gb, he knows he can get those now, he's wondering about a laptop with MORE than 4Gb of memory.

Re:Dell?

[_Swank]

did YOU bother reading the first sentence?

Anybody know when laptops over 4gb might be coming out?

Thinkpad

[NaNO2x]

I sugest a Thinkpad. They are durable, small, ment for portible offices. Most allow a preinstalled 4GB or more of RAM. I know some go over 6. They are pricey but they are worth it I feel. So check them out.

Re:Thinkpad

[Bastardchyld]

There is no market (yet) for a laptop with over 4GB of RAM, you have to remember that in order to have a MS OS and over 4GB of RAM you will have to have 2003 Server Enterprise Edition (or 2000 Advanced, etc). While I am sure it would be nice to have, you may want to look at purchasing a high powered workstation/server and having that host your vhds so that you can simply develop on the laptop and test on the VMs (hosted on the other box).

Re:Thinkpad

[ckaminski]

Please explain again the usefulness of Windows XP 64bit edition, then?

<quote>
Description of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is a near feature-complete version of Windows XP Professional that runs on x64 processors. Windows XP Professional x64 Edition supports 128 GB of RAM and 16 terabytes of virtual memory address space, as compared to 4 GB of both physical RAM and virtual memory address space for 32-bit Windows XP Professional.

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition runs 32-bit applications in the Windows on Windows 64 (WOW64) subsystem providing compatibility with the more than 10,000 existing 32-bit Windows applications while enabling new 64-bit applications.
</quote>

<Url:http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/64bi t/russel_exploringx64.mspx>
<url:http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/over view.mspx>

Re:Thinkpad

[arsenix]

No thinkpad will do more than 4 Gigs of ram, because none of them have more than 2 slots (nor do they have the address lines for bigger modules even if they existed). Most new notebooks will now do 4G if you are willing to pony up for the expensive 2G modules (dell, thinkpad, apple etc).

    If you want more than 4 Gig of ram you need to find a notebook with more than 2 slots. I personally have never seen a notebook with more than two slots, even the monsters from EuroCom, Alienware etc only have two. So it seems you are pretty much SOL. Get a SFF desktop or wait a year or two...

James

Re:Thinkpad

[arsenix]

Actually something just occurred to me... you could go for a large high speed flash drive and put your swap on there. You can buy hard disk sized flash drives (at no small expense) that might do the job if installed in a second hard disk bay. Not as good as real RAM, but a lot better than HD based virtual memory. An idea to consider...

James

Find new dev tools.

[SanityInAnarchy]

There are already enough comments telling you what I imagine you'll actually do -- desktop on wheels, or a laptop with 4 gigs of RAM when they come out. I'll make the unreasonable suggestion, then -- stop tolerating something that needs so much RAM! Go back to vim/gcc -- or whatever, there are certainly some saner options for you.

I wouldn't mind a laptop with 8 or 10 gigs of RAM, but I'd much rather have a reasonably efficient system so I don't have to pay for that much RAM.

Re:Find new dev tools.

[supabeast!]

Go back to vim/gcc -- or whatever, there are certainly some saner options for you.

I think it's a safe bet that a developer looking for a laptop with more than four gigs of RAM would find more efficient tools if that were an option. But vim/gcc? Anyone doing stuff complex enough to need that much RAM would be lost if he had to do everything with just vim and gcc, unless he's some sort of savant.

Re:Find new dev tools.

[Billly Gates]

Agreed Emacs is just so ram hungry.

Re:Find new dev tools.

[gstoddart]

I'll make the unreasonable suggestion, then -- stop tolerating something that needs so much RAM! Go back to vim/gcc -- or whatever, there are certainly some saner options for you.

But, he's said he's running specific development tools. It's not like he can suddenly change them en masse. He may have no choice but to run Vista, which by all accounts wants memory like you wouldn't believe.

He's also making the valid observation that he can forsee one or more virtual machines being hosted on this machine (I have a whole separate machine to host virtual PCs). Virtual machines are a huge help in development since you can wipe them out and start from scratch without any down time. it's a realistic thing to plan for. They're great for sandboxes and doing all sorts of testing.

The reality of it is, the tools he is running are probably something he can't escape -- those are the tools, and you can't replace Visual Studio with vim and gcc easily, as much as people like to think. Sometimes, you're stuck using those tools you're given, because that's what your company is going to use no matter what you like.

I wouldn't mind a laptop with 8 or 10 gigs of RAM, but I'd much rather have a reasonably efficient system so I don't have to pay for that much RAM.

Well, with the overheads of Vista, I can see it becoming such that a laptop can't possibly be used as a development machine. I know within my company, when I used to say I want 2GB or so on a machine, they would look at me like "who could possibly need that much RAM?"; now, it's commonplace. The reality is, 1GB of RAM on my development machine (older, needs an upgrade desperately) is a joke (cause using 1GB of RAM on a Windows machine means you're using >= 1GB of swap space).

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of vi (been using it for about 20 years), and I have good memories of using gcc back in the day -- but, I just never understand why the advice on Slashdot is to always migrate to tools which aren't applicable for the person at hand. If you write Windows software, you're probably using some big software to do it in.

Unfortunately, laptops have always trailed behind desktops in terms of how big you can make them. But, if you need the big-honking machine, and also need a laptop, you could be SOL.

Granted, I come from an era where having 8GB of ram on any machine (let alone one with a single user) would be absurd (unimagible in fact) -- but, it's awfully tough to develop enterprise software on mickey mouse machines. I bet there's quite a few people who could benefit from a laptop with > 4GB. I do agree with you that this is partly the fault of the OS for becoming so damned bloated. I just don't think it will help this particular gentleman's problem.

Cheers

Re:Find new dev tools.

[Gulthek]

Go back to vim/gcc -- or whatever, there are certainly some saner options for you.

Perhaps he is debugging the dev tools using the dev tools.

Re:Find new dev tools.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Indeed, which is why I also said "or whatever, there are certainly some saner options for you." I like vim/gcc, you might like something else, but the fact remains, dev software is insanely bloated for no good reason.

Because the fact is, he's not "doing stuff complex enough to need that much RAM." He's just using tools written badly enough to need that much RAM.

Re:Find new dev tools.

[SanityInAnarchy]

He may have no choice but to run Vista, which by all accounts wants memory like you wouldn't believe.

You must be referring to the article which said "4 gigs is the sweet spot", which is frankly BS. By all accounts, Vista is faster than XP, and we know it's needed for 64-bit, unless you want to try XP 64-bit, or move away from Windows.

He's also making the valid observation that he can forsee one or more virtual machines being hosted on this machine...

Fair enough. Then again, how many VMs do you need running at once? Especially given that you can "hibernate" the VM, with or without OS support, I don't really see needing to run more than one, maybe two. And I can definitely see 2 gigs being sufficient there -- 1 gig for the VM, 1 gig for the OS.

I understand that in another few years, that may be nowhere near enough, but if he's willing to spend that much for a laptop, he may well consider buying a new one in another couple of years.

but, I just never understand why the advice on Slashdot is to always migrate to tools which aren't applicable for the person at hand. If you write Windows software, you're probably using some big software to do it in.

Well, as I said, I'm deliberately making the unreasonable suggestion, since everyone else made the reasonable ones (mostly involving how to actually fit that much RAM into a laptop).

And, as I said, I'm not attached to vim and gcc, I'm just pointing out that vim and gcc can work comfortably in 64 megs of RAM, so it's absurd that the tools he's using need that much. Job or no job, there should be some alternative there -- and from what I can tell, the compiler is NOT what's using all the RAM, that'd be the IDE and debugger (but not so much the debugger; see gdb), so there should be alternate IDEs that don't suck down so much RAM, but still use the same backend tools.

I do agree with you that this is partly the fault of the OS for becoming so damned bloated. I just don't think it will help this particular gentleman's problem.

Not so much the OS... And if it doesn't help, it doesn't help. I just think that anytime anyone finds themselves with a non-multimedia app wanting more than a gig of RAM for a single user, they should start asking questions and looking for alternatives. (If you're reading this 20 years from now, I'm sure you'll say something like "more than a terabyte of RAM" instead, but the principle is the same.)

Re:Find new dev tools.

[gstoddart]

You must be referring to the article which said "4 gigs is the sweet spot", which is frankly BS.

Not specifically really. I know 1GB is way too small for me, and I've seen some of our older dev machines trying to run Vista, and, to be honest, we have a lot of complaints about speed. (Yes, it's probably true there are optimizations we've not applied.)

Fair enough. Then again, how many VMs do you need running at once?

What are you doing with them is my short answer. Imagine trying to simulate a multi-server environment using VMs on a single big honking box -- we've needed situations like this in the past (though, we don't have a big jeezus box with 8GB of RAM on them.) Things like setting up an Exchange environment, or a really big cluster or whatnot are so much easier if you can ave several VMs that you move about.

Anyway, you make a bunch of good points, most of which I agree with. Just trying to point out why it's not always feasible to do change tools, or how you might have a situation which requires a lot of beef. God knows, I'd be extatic to have 4GB. But, I can envision some poor bugger who might need more. ;-)

Cheers

Re:Find new dev tools.

[Anonymous Coward]

Things like setting up an Exchange environment, or a really big cluster or whatnot are so much easier if you can ave several VMs that you move about.

Right, that's exactly what you do on a laptop.

Re:Find new dev tools.

[Gorshkov]

Because the fact is, he's not "doing stuff complex enough to need that much RAM." He's just using tools written badly enough to need that much RAM.

You haven't spent a lot of time doing MRP applications, simulations, or a shitload of OTHER applications that DO require a lot of RAM, have you?

Some people really do work with large datasets.

t60p

[(H)elix1]

You can get an IBM T60P from the factory with 4G of RAM. You will want to make sure you get a 64-bit CPU as well, otherwise you will have issues. Be warned, the 2G SIMs will set you back ~800 each. Much better as a workstation, however. The P also use a higher clocked RAM, 7200 RPM HDD, and some other perks that make it a bit faster than most laptops.

Re:Dell?

[rizzo420]

i get this strange feeling that this post was made just for more vista bashing. i'm using vista on 1 GB of RAM right now and there's no issues that i've seen with speed. it's just as quick as XP, and actually starts up and shuts down quicker than XP.

i will admit that it sits at about 50% memory usage all the time, but i haven't noticed any slowness. granted, i don't do any vmware stuff. i haven't attempted at firing up any memory intensive programs, other than maybe dreamweaver (which isn't bad from what i can tell). this is also only my second day using it (i did an in place upgrade from XP pro).

my other question is why he's got windows 2003 installed... i imagine he means XP, in which case, maybe he doesn't really know what he's doing? sounds like he didn't even bother trying to find laptops and just wanted to bash vista.

RAM cost is probably limiting Factor

[haplo21112]

The cost of Laptop Ram is probably a limiting factor here, 2GB so-dimms are already obscenely expensive, laptops currently for the most part only accomodate 2 dimms currently so 4 GB requires the 2GB dimms. Larger SO-Dimms would probably have a stratispheric price. The market is probably so limited as to prevent RAM and laptop makers from building platforms to support this yet.

server unavailable...

[Anonymous Coward]

has it suffered from too many connections already?

More than 4 GB?!?!

[Sneakernets]

good god.


4 GB should be enough for everyone.

Re:More than 4 GB?!?!

[pla]

4 GB should be enough for everyone.

I know why this got modded funny (Billy G mockery), but really, we should consider it insightful rather than funny.

Yes, for servers, you (sometimes!) have a reason to run with huge amounts of RAM. For a desktop machine, even a high-end developer's machine, if you need that much memory, you need better tools. No "but the project requires it" allowed. If the requirements demand more than 4GB on a laptop, you have a problem long before reaching the "physical availability of suitable hardware" phase of development.

Now, I don't mean to say that situations can't exist where you would need that much memory. But you don't stick it on a laptop. You host the build environment on a "real" server, and either connect remotely or even (gasp!) do the work at work.

Re:More than 4 GB?!?!

[koan]

"You will never need more than 64k"
Get it? You can never have to much proc power or to much hard drive space or to much RAM, and some of us can never have enough.

Re:Dell?

[fotbr]

Its completely plausable he's got Win 2k3 installed, depending on what he's developing.

32 bit windows can't have even 4GB RAM

[S3D]

Max addressable memory on 32bit XP pro (and probably Vista too) is 4GB, but that is with together videomemory. So actual useful RAM from 3 to 3.6 GB, depending on the board. Some system even only report 2 GB from 4. To have complete 4GB you have to use 64bit Windows. There exist 16 GB laptops, but they run Solaris IIRC.

Re:32 bit windows can't have even 4GB RAM

[Blakey Rat]

He's running Windows 2003. And moving to Vista soon. It says right in the summary.

Re:32 bit windows can't have even 4GB RAM

[stefanlasiewski]

You need to install the Win XPBigMem Kernel to take advantage of the full 64-bit addressing space.

Re:32 bit windows can't have even 4GB RAM

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're confusing physical RAM and the per-process virtual address space.

The maximum per-process virtual address space on 32-bit versions of Windows is usually limited to 2 GB.

The maximum physical RAM on 32-bit versions of Windows is usually limited to 4 GB.

It's important to understand that these two values are independent. The OS is responsible for mapping the per-process virtual address space to pages in physical RAM (or to disk, if there's not enough RAM). The virtual address space for each process is completely independent.

For example, suppose you had a machine with 4 GB of physical RAM, running two processes which each allocate 2 GB of virtual memory. The address space of both processes could be completely mapped to physical memory at the same time. There isn't some unused 1 GB chunk of physical RAM allocated to video memory, or whatever.

Re:32 bit windows can't have even 4GB RAM

[dbIII]

There exist 16 GB laptops, but they run Solaris IIRC.

Good luck even getting the people that sell them to talk to you about these expensive beasts - they must live off closed military contracts or something.

Re:32 bit windows can't have even 4GB RAM

[TheThiefMaster]

Windows XP / 2003 supports PAE (paging address extensions IIRC) which allows a 32-bit OS to access ram through a 64-bit ram controller. It can still only use 2GB for the OS and give 2GB to each process, but you'd need a 64-bit OS to get around that.

Windows seems to have a problem with the ram hole though, because this machine I'm using now has 4GB of ram, with PAE enabled, and windows can still only access 3.25GB (roughly). Memtest32 (32-bit linux-based ram test) successfully accessed the rest of the ram by testing 0.0-3.25GB and then 4.0-4.75GB (where it had been remapped to by the bios).

Re:32 bit windows can't have even 4GB RAM

[pestilence669]

This is somewhat correct (video RAM has nothing to do with anything, unless you use one of those chips).

There are quite a few prerequisites if you want 32-bit Windows to address more than 2GB of RAM. Windows can perform paging for applications that use the respective API. Remember the good 'ol days of 16-bit memory segments? It's kind of like that. Some apps, like SQL server, sort-of support large memory, by paging large chunks of it around virtual memory space. It's not efficient at all and it's not as useful as having a flat memory space.

Even with paging, it's still very difficult to get a stock Windows install to address more than 3GB RAM without some tweaking. There's a segmentation between kernel and user RAM, that Windows expects to be divided in half. Even in a 4GB system, your largest contiguous block of heap is 2GB without tweaking. You're VERY lucky to get 3GB out of it. The same problem affects 8GB systems and so-on.

Windows 2003 Data Center supports 128GB RAM (in 32-bit mode), so it is *POSSIBLE*... but your apps have to be specially written and it'll generally perform badly. You're more likely to run out of kernel resources & memory before you are to run out of user-space RAM.

64-bit Windows might seem like the answer, but there are few applications, fewer drivers, and the O/S itself will take more RAM (due to the larger memory pointer sizes). Running 32-bit applications on a 64-bit host only works smoothly for every other operating system that offers it.

Honestly, I'd hold off and use XP w/ 2GB RAM. 64-bit Vista w/4GB RAM will perform exactly the same, but the hardware will just end up costing more and the 64-bit apps aren't here yet.

The Answer is Obvious...

[Anonymous Coward]

...By a laptop you like and upgrade it with 2 2GB ram sticks. Couldn't be much more simple than that, eh?

16GB Dual-Proc SPARC

[KatTran]

http://www.tadpole.com/products/notebooks/bullfrog dp.asp

FEATURES AND ADVANTAGES:

        * Powerful Performance and Processing:
                    o Dual CPU 1.2GHz UltraSPARC-IIIi, 1 MB level 2 Cache with 1GB-8GB memory per CPU (Up to 16GB total)
                    o Solaris 9 Operating Environment
                    o Full-length PCI slot supporting Windows co-processor, network adaptors, high end graphics and many other options
        * State of the Art Mobility:
                    o Mobile server consolidation - the 22 lbs Bullfrog Dual Processor replaces a typical 450 lbs server box (with power backup modules) with no loss in performance or connectivity
                    o Permits a "work from anywhere" environment
                    o Consolidation of Solaris and Windows onto one box
        * Redundancy:
                    o Dual Disk Drives with capacity of up to 200GB (100GB + 100 GB)
                    o Built in UPS
                    o Dual Processors
        * Efficiency:
                    o Total costs reduced by as much as 50% over equivalent conventional server system
                    o Total weight savings of as much as 90%
        * Reduced Complexity when deployed with Comet 12/15 Thin Clients:
                    o Wireless Solutions are simple to deploy
                    o Reduced System Admin overheads
                    o Manage services not desktops
                    o Reduce desktop productivity licensing by a factor of 10
        * Accessories & Upgrades: A wide range of accessories that enhance Tadpole Bullfrog usability

Re:16GB Dual-Proc SPARC

[KE1LR]

Battery life: 12 seconds. :-)

Re:16GB Dual-Proc SPARC

[FuturePastNow]

Notice it didn't say battery, it said "built in UPS" ;)

Re:16GB Dual-Proc SPARC

[Jeff DeMaagd]

If it is for Windows work, that won't do it because the Windows machine is on a PCI add-in card, and Windows won't work on Sparc.

But anyway, I don't know of any Windows notebook that can do 4GB. Most of the notebooks I've seen that can accommodate 4GB don't have PAE support so that it can actually use 4GB, they often only leave a little over 3GB that the system can use.

Maybe I'd suggest lugging extra notebooks instead, rather than running oodles of VMware sessions on one, split them down a bit.

Re:16GB Dual-Proc SPARC

[TeknoHog]

With this solution the poster would have to switch to unix, but then he/she probably wouldn't need such obscene amounts of RAM.

Re:16GB Dual-Proc SPARC

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez, just think of these in a Beowolf cluster!

Re:16GB Dual-Proc SPARC

[Lost Engineer]

My notebook supports PAE.
Oh nevermind, it is limited to 3GB.
Wait what? Why does it have PAE?

Re:16GB Dual-Proc SPARC

[Verte]

They're using virtual machines anyway, so there's no issue with running windows on one. I'm not sure what the deal is with VMs on SPARCs, though. But it's true, it's easier and cheaper to switch to *nix and remove the need for more ram in the process.

Re:Dell?

[Anonymous Coward]

He is probably doing some development work that requires W2k3 thus his dev platform is W2k3. There are a few SDKs from Microsoft that will not work on XP (home or pro) and basically require W2k3 if you want to be able to build and test on the same box. He didn't tell us what exactly he was doing, or why he needed W2k3, just that he was using it. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion he doesn't know what's he doing just because he has W2k3 installed instead of XP.

Re:Dell?

[Bastardchyld]

I am sure that he knows enough of what he is doing to be able to accurately determine if he is using Windows 2003 or Windows XP. Just because 2003 is server class, does not mean that there is no reason to install it on a laptop.

Re:strange requirements

[HTH NE1]

4Bb : 32 bit^2 ?

I guess those would be Biggabits.

It's all about bandwidth

[skinfitz]

Why not have a big behemoth server sitting on the net somewhere and access it remotely using a nice wireless OSX machine?

Re:It's all about bandwidth

[sogoodsofarsowhat]

Because he comes from a less sophisticated world (windows) and does not know about such things. :) Quit given away all our secrets. :)

Re:It's all about bandwidth

[jaymzru]

I'm going to guess that if a big hard drive doesn't suffice, then the latency between a web server and his laptop would be far too bad.

Re:It's all about bandwidth

[iMac Were]

I'm posting this from a mac.

You can wriiiite and hav aannnnnnnnal sex at the same tim e????????///////?

Re:It's all about bandwidth

[skinfitz]

Unless he's developing games I can't see it being a problem. I access my big Windows boxes remotely all the time from my little PowerBook using RDP without problems. Obviously the availability of wireless is an issue, but if it's available and fast enough it's quite useable - plus you don't have to lug a monster around with you and if it gets broken or stolen you don't lose your work.

Re:It's all about bandwidth

[hummassa]

Please take a look at my other answer @
  http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=224406&thr eshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=18175844 ...

Re:It's all about bandwidth

[5pp000]

That's how I deal with it. Works pretty well as long as I can get a net connection.

Re:It's all about bandwidth

[dave420]

Why OS X? If the work is being done remotely, just use an even smaller notebook than Apple's offerings. Or spend as much and get a faster notebook from another manufacturer.

Well...

[Pojut]

...you could always hop on Ebay and buy one of those old-school lunchbox style portable computers...just gut the innards and install your own stuff...

Heavier and larger than a laptop, but capable of carrying around a tower's computational power...not very convienient, I know, but still...it is an option...

Re:Easy Answer: May

[P2PDaemon]

Someone didn't read the summary... :)

Re:Dell?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I'm wondering what he's doing that requires that much memory! I'm running my house server just fine off of an old Dell PowerEdge Server with only 512k of memory- Win2k3 doesn't actually *NEED* 1.6GB just to boot up. I think he's been Pwnd.

Stop Suggesting alternate Platforms, OSes, Tools

[haplo21112]

I think its pretty safe to assume that given the initial info the user is probably doing Windows development. Thats really only going to work on a x86 or x86_64 machine running windows, and windows development tools. Anything else is just fracturing the issue, and not contributing to a solution. Face it Open Source, MAC, Unix, and all the rest are wonderful, but some of us....ALOT of us are stuck in a WinTel world.

Re:Dell?

[jim3e8]

I'm running my house server just fine off of an old Dell PowerEdge Server with only 512k of memory

Wow. Apparently 640K is enough for everybody.

No you can't.

[Andy Dodd]

There is no way you can get an IBM T60P from the factory. Used yes, from the factory, no.

Maybe a (nearly) identical with (possibly) lower quality Lenovo T60P, but not an IBM T60P.

Re:No you can't.

[John Harrison]

I'm typing this on an IBM Thinkpad T60p. One has to look very hard to find the word Lenovo on it. It says IBM in big bright letters. Levnovo has the right to use the IBM brand for 5 years and is partly owned by IBM. I should add that until 10 days ago I worked for IBM.

Re:No you can't.

[WMD_88]

The T60 line came out after the Lenovo deal. There are no "IBM" T60s. I must also say that my dad got a Z61m recently - a Lenovo, obviously - and the whole "lower quality" thing is a myth. The thing is just as solid as any ThinkPad I've ever seen.

Re:No you can't.

[Marcos Eliziario]

Care to cite factual sources on your "lower quality" statement? Even to say (possible) require that you have at least some factual evidence to back your claim on the plausibleness of "lower quality"

Re:No you can't.

[John Harrison]

I have an IBM T60p. I'm typing on it right now. Yes it is post-Lenovo deal. It says IBM on it in big bright letters. Twice. They have the right to use the brand for 5 years.

Re:No you can't.

[capsteve]

i always loved the thinkpad line. solid fucking laptops.
i used a 760cd years ago, upgraded to another system, passed it on to a co-worker, and when it had any issues, we contacted ibm one day, received a shipping box the next day, shipped it out the following day, and would get it returned within a couple of days. i was impressed with the build quality and service. but that was then...

i'll cite you my own experience regarding lower quality... actually it should be lower quality control.
last month i had a client request that i deploy three brand spanking new lenovo's in his organization: two x60's and one t60. simple configs: install office, install anti-virus, configure network and mail, transfer data from older laptops. simple or so i thought.

the first x60 was not only DOA(hard drive failure) but it was missing the power adapter(we ended up using one from the other x60). i broke the lenovo seal at the customer site, so it was odd, missing power supply, but we went ahead and RMA'ed the DOA x60 back to CDW for a replacement unit. the second x60 install went without a hitch, as did the t60.

the replacement x60 to the first DOA unit started out fine, but within an hour of powering the unit up, it started blue screening. after a couple of recovery disk system reloads and other attempts to determine the nature of the problem, i was finally able to trace the error to a physical memory problem. since this was a new unit, we RMA'ed it AGAIN.

the final replacement unit worked great. that's one customer, 50% failure rate.
in both instances, the DOA units had physical problems that might have been caused by shipping, i.e. rough handling causing HDD problems or misalignment of the memory... who knows. i never had a failure rate that high at one location, desktop or laptop. i think lenovo's quality control has gone down.

Mini System for 16GB Memory...

[__aaclcg7560]

If you going to build a mini system, Gigabyte has a nice AMD AM2 microATX motherboard that can support a maximum of 16GB DDR2 memory. I'm thinking about getting the ATX version for my next upgrade.

Re:Stop Suggesting alternate Platforms, OSes, Tool

[Anonymous Coward]

He's already doing virtualization with VMWare, so what's a little bit more?

Re:Dell?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Damn- I messed up. I meant 512MB......a single stick though.....

Quick fix or "Overkill"

[Sigma 7]

Some of the dev-tools I want to run are just obscene RAM-pigs. On the desktop I'm using now (Win2003), it sucks up 1.6gb just to boot.

Based on that alone, the best fix is to find out what occupies that 1.6GB, as that amount of memory would pin similar desktops that use three times the "recommended" memory amount. Otherwise, I might as well use an "Overkill" tag.

Move that to Vista, add a VM-Ware session or two, and I'm worried I'll be pushing 4Gb.

Okay... If necessary, you could use virtual memory for your two VM-Ware sessions.

Re:Quick fix or "Overkill"

[El_Isma]

Actually, using the ram is good. If it's Windows doing some caching it's great. I'd hate to have 4gb of RAM and be using only 70mb!

Don't get me wrong, I know that you're implying that maybe some app is loading on startup and seizing RAM (spyware or other more normal stuff). But I really don't get why most people assume that no free RAM = bad. RAM is cache.

Re:Quick fix or "Overkill"

[Svartalf]

Okay... If necessary, you could use virtual memory for your two VM-Ware sessions.

Today's advice is brought to you by the words "swap" and "thrash"...

VNC? Remote Desktop?

[amuro98]

Instead of creating a portable development environment/lab on your laptop, why not setup a secure network, and use something like Remote Desktop or VNC to access your big-beefy-box (BBB) at the office?

Use the laptop for light file editting and whatnot, then upload the files to your remote BBB for compilation and testing.

I used to do this at a former job when telecommuting. It was a lot easier when I could simply access "my desktop" exactly as it was as if I were sitting in the office. Well, OK, I only had 1 monitor when telecommuting, but I could still be productive.

Re:VNC? Remote Desktop?

[Ixitar]

You presume that broadband connectivity that allows the ports for VPN are available. In my travels, I go to places where I cannot access the internet. Some places have the broadband speed, but block the ports for me to do VPN. At times, I am just not near any connectivity. Do not make assumptions like the person always has broadband connectivity unless they say that they do.

Re:VNC? Remote Desktop?

[golgotha007]

Sheesh, windows users are so damn unimaginative.

Simply do VNC over an SSH tunnel. I seriously doubt that you have to worry about port 22 being blocked, and all of your packets will be encrypted.

and yes, you can do this in windows with putty (windows ssh package) and vncviewer.exe.

Look here for a step by step how do to this

Re:VNC? Remote Desktop?

[golgotha007]

I apologize for the incorrect link above.

Here is the correct link for the step by step

Re:VNC? Remote Desktop?

[Ixitar]

Will your solution address the no internet connectivity?

btw: I have access to the corporate though a particular VPN tool. Your solution will not work for me.

Re:VNC? Remote Desktop?

[amuro98]

Well, I presumed broadband access - after all, most telecommuters have broadband access of some sort now a days. And if you're someplace where you don't have broadband access, you probably shouldn't be working anyways (eg. the beach) :-)

You don't need VPN to use VNC/Remote Desktop. Someone already mentioned SSH tunnelling, for instance.

Even without broadband, I would think you could still find ways of being productive remotely without having to replicate your entire work environment on single mega laptop. Might be cheaper to just use 2 (or more?) laptops. Use one for compiling, one for running, one for editting...? Considering you could end up spending a couple grand on just the RAM for one laptop, multiple, modestly equipped laptops might be a better solution.

I can sympathize having a VPN in place that doesn't allow VNC/Remote Desktop. It makes no sense to me either, but corporate IT at my current employer takes paranoia to all new heights.

Re:VNC? Remote Desktop?

[Anomalyst]

I seriously doubt that you have to worry about port 22 being blocked

Then the site administrator is insufficiently paranoid. Everything not explicitly allowed is denied. Generically opening a port to an inside resource is pretty stupi^Wrisky. Ther needs to be some additional factor in the authentication process. A work from home developer could probably get by with a Static IP, VPN certificates, port knocking, etc. Supporting a randomly mobile developer is a royal security PITA. As other posters have noted, I would recommend HTTPS/SSL/443 VPN connection with a certificate for the remote end and then SSH/RDP/VNC through the tunnel. HTTPS is rarely locked down so tight as to prevent a random outbound connection and, if so, the procedure for getting that site allowed is probably a well worn path thru the helpdesk and authorized by the same PHB that let you in the door. As opposed to opening a firewall port which would probably require an IT person authorized to modify the firewall and a sign-off by a high muckety-muck.

Re:VNC? Remote Desktop?

[Ixitar]

I think that you are still thinking US. I am traveling in Asia.

Let me go through your points.

There are customers who will not let an outside computer on their internal networks. There are some who do not grant access to the internet. I actually have full wireless access on the beach at home, but then I would not be working.

I do need the company's VPN client to get to the internal network. There is no other way. Once connected to the internal network, then I can do remote desktop. I have run into a few cases where the VPN client cannot access the network. It could be ports or it could be other problems. I can complain to the hotel, but there are quite often language issues.

Now you recommend two laptops. Do you even think about the weight? I travel for work. I do not telecommute. All additional weight is a pain to deal with. Additional memory sticks weigh a great deal less than another computer.

4Gb may be enough for you

[njchick]

A laptop with 4Gb of RAM may actually work better than you expect. Lots of memory is used for caching. Once there is little free physical memory left, the disk cache start shrinking, but it doesn't affect the performance very much until the cache is reduced to less than 10Mb. At this point, the OS may start swapping some rarely used memory to the hard drive. Given 4Gb, I don't think you'll see swap used very often if at all. And the way to compensate would be to get a faster hard drive. Hybrid flash-magnetic drives are going to appear on the market soon, perhaps before the 4Gb memory modules.

You may also want to move whatever you want to run in VMware to a separate machine. I don't know if it has to be mobile. Even if it has, it's easier to move two laptops than one desktop. It would help if you have all accessories (power cords, mice) at every site where you use the laptops, so you don't have to lug them back and forth every time.

Obligatory car analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

submitter: How can I install a 120-gallon gas tank on my car? I need to drive New York/Los Angeles *FAST*.
slashdot crowd: Have you considered taking the plane?
you: Stop suggesting alternate forms of transportation, some of us are afraid to fly.

Re:Obligatory car analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

more like:

Submitter: I want to go from New York to Los Angeles fast. Can someone suggest a good form of transportation?
Slashdot: Have you considered going to New Jersey insted?
You: That's a great idea. I live in my mom's basement in New Jersey, and it looks a lot like pictures of other people's basements in Los Angeles.

Similar Issue

[Rac3r5]

I recently purchased a Toshiba Satellite XP Tablet PC. It came with 2 512MB modules and it is expandable to 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) modules. However in my case, here in Van, BC, Canada, a 2GB($500-600+CDN) RAM module costs more than 2 1GB RAM ($187-200CDN) modules. Anyone know why?
My laptop is mainly for surfing the internet, using regular MS Office apps and programming in .NET and Java.

Re:Similar Issue

[Pope]

Higher density RAM has always cost more than lower density RAM, no surprise there.

Re:Similar Issue

[Rac3r5]

Quote: "Higher density RAM has always cost more than lower density RAM, no surprise there."

I know that.. its just a bit surprising that it costs more than 5x more....

What is the real question

[zippthorne]

You could wait, spend a fortune, lug a desktop, or even buy a mac as everyone here has suggested, perhaps.

But the real question is, What is it that you need a +4GB laptop for? Sometimes, (many times perhaps) we have a problem that we get an idea how to solve that may or may not be the most effective way to do it. We then go and as questions about how to accomplish individual steps in our not particularly effective method.

But depending on the problem, it is sometimes better to ask about the actual problem. Someone is bound to have solved it or something similar or have an insight that would make many of our steps (hopefully the hardest ones) unnecessary.

Re:What is the real question

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy a Mac?! Who suggested that? It's just another PC.

Re:What is the real question

[UnknownSoldier]

> But the real question is, What is it that you need a +4GB laptop for?

Because some datasets are 3+ Gigs. Video, geometry, weather, game-state-enumeration, etc...

I've actually got a similiar problem -- one of my datasets is ~3.5 gigs, and I'm wondering how to manage it on Win32...

Interim Solution: Use a USB Flash drive as Swap

[veggiespam]

Buy yourself a fast USB flash drive with 8GB or so of ram. Then, plug it into to a fast USB port (some Dell laptops have one set of fast ports and another for slower devices, so YMMV). Run some sort of speed test, make sure the Flash really does transfer faster than the internal HD - you never know what your motherboard will do.

If it is faster by a big enough factor, then create a new or second swap disk in Windows (search MS's KBs). You can make this your primary disk and remove the C: swap to make sure you only go to the faster swap disk. Since reboots are required, you may have to make sure the drive is in the same port the machine each time you boot up.

I kept running out of ram and used this trick with XP and Linux. It worked for me and I hope it will for you. There is rumours that Vista will have the Flash-as-Swap(tm) ability built in.

Re:Interim Solution: Use a USB Flash drive as Swap

[Joe U]

There is rumours that Vista will have the Flash-as-Swap(tm) ability built in.

It's called readyboost. It's not the same as the swapfile, it's actually more optimized.

Save money with the notebook

[Billly Gates]

Just install Ssh on the notebook and then install ssh on a superfast desktop like the quad core macs that can have more than 4 gigs of ram and run Windows. Of course if you want any gui's you will need X and I do not know if your development tools are win32 only or not? Then if you can use nmake you wont need the ram to begin with.

Terminals began when early microcomputers sucked and were just mere toys. They are used for situations like what you described. Maybe you can also install vnc on the other computer and you can have gui access as well.

Re:Save money with the notebook

[Glonoinha]

Hmmm.

If only Windows 2003 Server came with some sort of terminal server software, like a VNC for Windows or something. Then he could run a termserver client on his laptop and connect to a monster desktop / server tower in the same room via wireless, and remote control the big beefy box over his wifi network.

They should invent something like that.

Re:Save money with the notebook

[Jesterboy]

Terminal services? Remote Desktop? On Windows?

Surely you jest, good sir!

Re:Save money with the notebook

[Glonoinha]

Yea, something exactly like the fictional technologies described on those wiki pages.

Someone should invent something like that. A way that the OP could use his laptop to remotely control the desktop of a really powerful (ie, SMP box with more than 4G of memory) Windows machine over the network, perhaps over the airwaves using an as of yet uninvented 'magic' signal propagation in perhaps the 2.4GHz range of the electromagnetic light waves spectrum.

That would be an excellent solution, if only it was real, available today, and affordable.
Hey, if we're going to dream, dream BIG!

Some day, I tell you, some day ;)

Re:Save money with the notebook

[dave420]

Or save your money and buy an even faster generic PC. Why do people think Macs are fast? Their hardware is always behind the rest of the field - it's even more noticeable now they're running Intel processors. If you want a fast computer, and it's been more than a month since the latest Mac line was released, don't get a mac.

Re:Dell?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does how many sticks it has have to do with it? Does having 2 of 256 give you more memory than 1 of 512? And if anyone mentions dual channel or NUMA, I will hit them.
They didn't have those in the early 90's when his server was made ;P

1.6GB on 2003 server? Something is screwy...

[Assmasher]

...I'm running 2003 Server with SQL Server 2005, a bunch of our services, and IIS 6.0 all running and I'm using less than 600 MB.

Maybe you should figure out what's wrong with your machine that requires 1.6 GB of RAM just to idle.

China Calling

[ReidMaynard]

Dear Fubari

We have a bed here at the Beijing Internet Addiction Clinic with your name on it....

Re:Dell?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Mid 1990s, it's a Dual Pentium II. I guess I just mentioned it because that single stick looks awfully lonely alongside the 20 or so memory sockets right next to it...:-)

Re:Dell?

[Mattsson]

He probably meant that it takes 1.6GB to load up the dev-tools.
I mean, he can't see how much RAM he's using at the login-prompt anyway, can he? =)
He might be getting his numbers from some source that doesn't subtract the system cache, though. ;-)
It's not uncommon for people to rant about how much RAM they're using when 70% of it are just cache that are still available for applications.

Well....

[fitten]

On the desktop I'm using now (Win2003), it sucks up 1.6gb just to boot. By the time I log in and start doing work, it is stretching 2Gb

You don't mention what tools you are using but:
- There's probably a lot of file caching going on so that doesn't matter as it will discard unused cache to fulfill your memory allocation requests as you run (low overhead).
- If you're running SQLServer, for example, by default it grabs a huge chunk of memory for caching. You can control how much it uses for this (set the max value) in the configuration tool. At one time, it defaulted to as much as all your memory minus 128M for the OS or something similarly large. Step 1 was to drop it down to a more reasonable level (like 256M total).
- Look for lots of other 'tools' that start on boot or on login and grab up memory... things like indexing services and the like.

Re:Stop Suggesting alternate Platforms, OSes, Tool

[Lord Ender]

On the desktop I'm using now (Win2003)

I think its pretty safe to assume that given the initial info the user is probably doing Windows development.

Thank you for that insight, Admiral Obvious, Sir!
/me salutes

Byte bits

[FormOfActionBanana]

Nooo, he is considering buying a laptop with 4 Bb (Byte bits) of RAM.

Re:Byte bits

[LilGuy]

i have no idea what that means, but i want one too!

Man, you're just like sheep

[thewils]

if all that you want is Big RAM.

Flash not fast enough

[bill_mcgonigle]

Buy yourself a fast USB flash drive with 8GB or so of ram. Then, plug it into to a fast USB port (some Dell laptops have one set of fast ports and another for slower devices, so YMMV). Run some sort of speed test, make sure the Flash really does transfer faster than the internal HD - you never know what your motherboard will do.

I was thinking the same thing, but according to Crucial the very fastest flash you can buy does 25MB/s, which isn't going to be faster than a SATAII/NCQ drive in a good laptop, unless you have a tremendous amount of seeks to do.

Now, take that idea one step further and give me an ExpressCard (2.5Gbps) 34 card with 8GB of DRAM in it... now we're talking swapspace! I don't see anybody actually manufacturing this though.

Re:1.6GB on 2003 server? Something is screwy...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I'm running 2003 Server with SQL Server 2005, a bunch of our services, and IIS 6.0 all running and I'm using less than 600 MB.

Maybe you should figure out what's wrong with your machine that requires 1.6 GB of RAM just to idle.

I'll second that. I'm currently using Server 2003 with 3 instances of Visual Studio 2005, an instance of VMWare, IIS , SQL Server and FireFox - 1297 MB, with FireFox eating 155 MB. If it's taking 1.6 to idle, I'm thinking something might be wrong with his setup.

MOD PARENT UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree with Lost Race, and think that the parent posting deserves lots of merit.

Re:Dell?

[BladeMelbourne]

I agree.

I primarily develop ASP.NET 2.0 on Windows 2003 Standard Server. When I boot Windows, with IIS and SQL 2000 starting by default, my RAM usage is at 150MB. This guy really needs to disable a lot of his unused services.

Windows 2003 can be as fast and use as little memory as XP. It's very easy to do - and a developer should already know how to do this.

SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 are slow bloatware. I'm not impressed at all.

Re:Dell?

[Gr8Apes]

OK - that's easy - run a supply chain planning full system, end to end. The model alone for some companies were over 20GB, while the super scaled down dev model usually came in around 1GB. And that's in-memory. Besides that, you'll generally be running at least 1 full fledged DB, several servers (appservers, webservers, various daemons, etc) and potentially an entire SOA on a single machine. Another one would be developing management and maintenance software that also integrates with existing systems such as Tivoli and HPOpenView, including some resources to monitor (usually a full instance of whatever you're trying to manage and monitor.

Ever want to see your memory usage skyrocket, try either of those scenarios. Is a laptop the best venue for development of that sort? No. However, when you need to be portable to show things to potential clients, it's pretty much the only way.

I should also mention that this type of code only runs on server OSes, because it requires over 2GB of RAM, which no client OS supports - that would be MS Windows, BTW, all other current OSes in this class support 4GB or more. MS OSes only supply a max of 3.5GB in user space unless you're running 64bit MS OSes. I'm not sure what 64bit XP is limited to. I'm sure MS is still smarting from the 20bit kernel -> 32bit counter for memory paging that guaranteed BSODs on NT 4.0 prior to SP1.

I'd examine your applications and work habits

[20oz]

Can your dev tools be tuned to be more efficient with memory use? I'm not sure what you mean by "dev tools", but if we're talking IDE's and such, a lot have bells and whistles that you may not even be using, that you can turn off. I'd also look at your own work habits and see what you have running that can be turned off. For example, on my laptop I was frustrated with the long boot time when I had apache and mysql installed, when I wanted to use it for purposes other than development. What I did was created a developer account which turned those applications on, and a generaluse account for when I just wanted to surf or play games. Try exiting out of things when you don't need to be in them. Unless you're really pushing your memory limits with a single application, chances are the applications you close will be cached to load quickly enough for use without becoming too much of a time sink. If all that doesn't help, it might just be time to stop and realize that you're using a system developed for portability and lower power consumption, when you in fact need a system tuned specifically for performance.

Re:Stop Suggesting alternate Platforms, OSes, Tool

[namityadav]

'Using Windows machine for development' and 'Windows development' are two different things, my dear friend ! For example, he might be using a platform independent language IDE (Bloated with plugins / tools for his specific development requirements) on Windows, which doesn't necessarily mean 'Windows development'. So, I would say that the parent's comment about 'safely assuming Windows development' was more sensible than your high-schoolish 'Uhhh .. Obviouslyyyyy' comment.

4GB? Don't be absurd!

[Ecuador]

640k is enough for everyone...

My gosh.

[Qbertino]

2 Gig running Win 2k3 Server and a developement enviroment? No ease of use is an excuse for that.
Whatever.
I'd suggest you take a Laptop, put 2 gig in it, install one of those new nifty 2.5" Samsung SSDs and crank up virtual memory. Being the performance hog it is allready and considering that these SSDs have an access time of 60ns you'll hardly notice any difference to RAM I presume. And you'll have a bizarely fast boot-up. Allthough Windows will eat most of that away.

That specific problem aside ... It's been said a million times in this story allready, but still:
Do check out OSS enviroments in a quiet moment. They really can be worth it. And switching from Windows Server Stuff to Linux Server Stuff really isn't that difficult. Besides, if you have a mature Appserver like JBoss or Zope eating up 2 gigs of memory you'll get your share of ease of use for that in return - and you can test those two on Windows beforehand btw. You'll never look back and you'll never have to learn something that becomes obsolete after 5 years or less. That's on of the main reasons I try to avoid proprietary park myself. Be it in the OS or the Applayer.

Stop using Windows

[kramulous]

Suggestions? Yeah. Stop using Windoze. I'm not trying to take the elitist role, but it sounds like you need more control over your computer's resources. If you still need to test apps, buy a second, crap laptop for testing purposes. I suspect it will be cheaper in the long term.

Re:Stop using Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya... forget teh financial instituionz that require .NET applicationz for Windoze. You should ignore UR contract and give them teh Lunix FTW!!!1!

Re:Stop using Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

rofl

Technical Consultants too

[onyxruby]

I'd love to be able to get something like this. I'm a technical consultant who travels and I have to remote into a lab server anytime I need to test / demonstrate something or the like.

I could easily run W2K3 server, SQL 2005 and host at least two VM sessions. One of these VM sessions would be a W2K3 server, with the other an XP client.

Since many of my clients tend to be places that are fairly paranoid I cant always access my lab remotely or hook up to their network. In essence I need a "lab in a box".

Re:Technical Consultants too

[Knara]

Well, the real solution is that if you're doing work and they're paranoid about letting your machine on their network (which is reasonable), you have them put you on a VLAN that's external enough for their comfort level and allows you to get back to your dev environment. Requires planning and competency on their part, tho.

16 GB ram and dual proc already available

[Anonymous Coward]

16 GB Ram and dual processor right here. Might have to use wine though to run your apps though.

http://www.tadpole.com/products/notebooks/bullfrog dp.asp/

Re:Stop Suggesting alternate Platforms, OSes, Tool

[Anonymous Coward]

...ALOT of us are stuck in a WinTel world.

You cannot free slaves. They must free themselves.

Disclaimer: This comment is meant to be funny

[smbarbour]

There's another problem that's not in your list... He's moving to Vista!

(This comment is not meant to inspire hatred of anything. It is meant to make people laugh.)

(Normally, I wouldn't have to explain that... but this is Slashdot!)

Notebooks with up to 16GB ram already here.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.tadpole.com/products/notebooks.asp/

I am sure the poster knows his hardware needs and has exhausted all alternatives. Since 16GB notebooks are available now there is obviously a market/need for them. So a hardware upgrade might indeed be the best course of action for the poster.

Re:Notebooks with up to 16GB ram already here.

[Zantetsuken]

that doesn't mean it's not a solution to a problem that doesn't yet exist

Laptop Idea

[jwilhelm]

How about a small, light laptop that you are comfortable using, paired with a powerful server back in the office. Pair the laptop with either an internal or external EVDO card (we use the Sprint Novatel EVDO cards), IPSec VPN back to the company, and then RDP into the server. Of course you could still run some applications (email, web, etc...) locally, but the really beefy stuff should run on the server. This has many performance advantages, but also reliability advantages in that your works can be on a server that is RAIDed and backed up. Additionally you can compile code and run tests on the server when you have to turn your laptop off.

Re:1.6GB on 2003 server? Something is screwy...

[Maxwell]

Uh huh, because that's what the nice task manager told you?

Try removing all the RAM in your server until you only have, say 576 (512+64) left. If you are really only using 600M, then it should run just great...right? You users won't even notice. You may even get promoted for saving money on RAM!

SQL server alone defaults to 'use all available ram' so it will eat up whatever you have as soon as anyone starts using the datbase(s)....

JON

on 2nd thought, maybe that is the guys problem, to OP: if you have SQL server on there, manually set the MAx ram setting!

Posted from a XPx64-Windows

[empaler]

You'd better be damned sure that the HW manufacturers support the devil, otherwise it's a bumpy ride. Even moreso than a normal Windows Experience.

MacBook Pro maybe?

[zizzo]

The MacBook Pro can go up to 3G. I was going to suggest a MacMini but they appear to cap at 2G. I agree with the sentiment that something is wrong though. You shouldn't be using 1.6G right after startup.

Re:MacBook Pro maybe?

[dave420]

Or a PC notebook with 4 gigs of memory... Apple's hardware isn't as fast as the adverts would have you believe, you know ;)

Big RAM?

[epp_b]

Big RAM huh? I dunno, those SO-DIMMs are pretty small.

Seeking is a major issue in swap performance

[tepples]

the very fastest flash you can buy does 25MB/s, which isn't going to be faster than a SATAII/NCQ drive in a good laptop, unless you have a tremendous amount of seeks to do.

Did you ever listen to your hard drive during heavy swapping? Did you hear your hard drive making several dozen clicking noises per second while it was being accessed? Those are seeks. NAND flash memory seeks much faster than hard disks do. Sure, each sector of a NAND flash memory can be rewritten only about a couple hundred thousand times, But if you really need the memory, replacing the flash stick when it wears out may still prove cheaper until the price of DRAM falls again.

Re:Seeking is a major issue in swap performance

[Ihlosi]

But if you really need the memory, replacing the flash stick when it wears out may still prove cheaper until the price of DRAM falls again.

Erm ... "when it wears out" is exactly the point where Windows will crash most horribly. Windows doesn't expect swap partitons to wear out.

Have you considered...

[hummassa]

that some people need to run the WHOLE shebang and on top of it simulate traffic/load conditions on the db server OR on the app server OR on the client and simluate hundreds/thousands of clients and that this requires immense amounts of RAM but is otherwise feasible to obtain more reliable results using virtualization? And that the same person might want to do it on the road (AKA: using the clients' tools, but away from the clients' control -- so (s)he can tweak the conditions at will) and that if you have 30-50 different enterprisey clients you don't want to have to connect remotely to your datacenter in other state -- you just want to load the whole thing in your laptop and see where is the fscking problem that makes an inventory entry take 5 minutes instead of 20 seconds, so the client will shell out the big bucks that this person deserves? (been there, done that, but in my consultant time I was hitting the road with 3-4 server-class machines in the luggage -- hotels probably hated me when the electrical bill came and yes, I carried some full-sized fire extinguishers with me also)

Try a flash drive

[GWBasic]

You could try putting a flash drive in your laptop and using it as swap space.

Re:GNAA

[REM333]

Ha ha. You fail at getting into the GNAA

Windwos ReadyBoost

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm late to the party, but check out ReadyBoost, turn flash drives into memory. I've never tried it though.

Re:Windwos ReadyBoost

[Ihlosi]

I'm late to the party, but check out ReadyBoost, turn flash drives into memory. It doesn't turn them into memory - it basically turns them into a hard disk cache for files that are frequently read, but rarely written to. It might help make your applications start faster (almost as fast as if you were running WinXP), but it doesn't do anything for running applications that require more RAM.

Look into other portable form factors.

[Myself]

You should really be looking at lunchbox machines. It's a portable form factor that puts a more-or-less-standard motherboard behind an LCD panel, with a bunch of slots and usually a few drive bays. Next Computing's offerings seem to top out at 16GB, but that's at least a little headroom.

If you're stuck on the traditional battery-powered laptop form factor, Dell even offers a 4GB-capable machine, though like all 32-bit machines, it sets aside some of that for device address space, leaving you with about 3GB for apps.

What are you running?!

[XO]

What on earth are you running?!

I've got Opera (with about 30 windows open), Xfire, Gaim, and several Poker clients all loaded right now, on a 1GB system, and I've got 600MB free out of 1024MB.

I can also load 3ds and photoshop, and still not be significantly over a gig unless i load some huge projects in them.

Disk?

[evilviper]

The other suggestions are quite apt. Even with a dial-up or wireless connection, remotely accessing a server should be just fine, as long as your apps aren't games, high resolution videos, or something else EXTREMELY graphically intensive.

You should see if there's any other way to get your job done with better tools, that aren't such RAM hogs. The fact that notebooks with 4GBs is hard to find is a good indication that nobody else has such a problem, and there's probably a better alternative.

But, if those really aren't possibilities: I would go for a home-built lugable Opteron desktop. It's pretty easy to find low-profile components like heatsinks, PSUs, etc, and even 1/2U servers. Throw in 16GBs of DDR, and find a simple way to clip the LCD and keyboard to the unit. It probably wouldn't be any heavier than the larger "desktop-replacement" notebooks.

Re:Dell?

[nacturation]

Its completely plausable he's got Win 2k3 installed, depending on what he's developing. Well it does say Win 2K3 but I have to wonder what the hell he's doing that's taking up that much memory after booting. We have a web server running Windows 2003 Standard which hosts just under 100 corporate sites that get on average hundreds of thousands of unique visitors per day and it's presently using 534MB of RAM (yes, I just checked) running now for a few weeks hosting some non-trivial .NET sites. So I have *no* idea why his desktop would use up 1.6 GB by default. The only thing that comes to mind is that it might be a poorly tuned SQL Server (he should probably throttle the memory settings) or, of course, it may be an actual legitimate need to run applications which are RAM hungry such as large simulations.

Insanity

[jones_supa]

Needing over 4GB for something like this seems just insane. Are you absolutely sure you couldn't rethink your software choices?

Don't do that, it's a recipe for problems.

[Ihlosi]

Buy yourself a fast USB flash drive with 8GB or so of ram.

Flash memory isn't RAM. It's EEPROM, with a high but limited number of write cycles (10^5 to 10^7, usually) per sector. If you use this for an application that is pretty much defined by lots and lots of write operations - i.e. as a swap partition - you've come up with a recipe for trouble. Especially since you cannot expect "cheap" flash media to perform any kind of wear levelling.

Vista can make use of Flash media in another way - by using them to store data that is read frequently, but rarely overwritten (i.e. the executables and data of your applications)

Remote Desktop and vpn.

[Anonymous Coward]

Developers have had this problem for years, they want to be portable and still have the power to compile code fast.

The solution has been the editor of choice over ssh in the terminal or some kind of remote desktop, like VNC or Remote Desktop for windows and X11 (a bit bandwidth intensive though) and FreeNX for Unix/Linux (I highly recommend NX).

That way, you get to be mobile with a cheap lappy and still have the power to use those memory hogging dev tools ;)

But if you're gonna do CAD work or other GL-type of work, then you're screwed. You'd need the best lappy you can find. /Seneca

A reasonably portable "lunch-box" computer

[eschwinge]

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetail s.aspx/xpsnb_m2010?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19/

Might fit the bill.

Re:1.6GB on 2003 server? Something is screwy...

[Kjella]

Well, I don't know about his system but I'm working on a system where I got first a ~1-10GB database in SQL server/Oracle (but not at same time) + two heavy java servers (application and background service) + reporting tools + development tools inside VMs and they eat memory like crazy, all of them. I asked for 4GB, got 2GB and it shows... When you're trying to pack what's normally a multi-server configuration designed for large volumes of users, they don't care about the base usage for a single developer. The only thing that matters is that you can push through hundreds or thousands of users without running into scaling problems.

I have one.

[Ransak]

I'm typing this post on a Dell D820 with SuSE 10.2 and 4GB of RAM.

As for more than 4GB, I'd just build a portable desktop. Even with this laptops 4GB of RAM, it can only release just over 3GB due to PCI needs, etc. You might just be better off running a persistent desktop on a server and VNCing/RDPing to it.

Dev Work on a Laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the Hell would you want to do that anyway?
Notebooks are typically slower than their desktop counterparts in most areas (FSB, RAM, hard drive), and less expandability options (less DIMM slots and HDD options) so why?
Sure, 'convenience', but damn; the cost of 'convenience' is at the cost of performance...

Consider a MaxPac

[DaPh00z]

http://www.maxvision.com/

An interesting line of rugged portable computers - top of the line will do 4 cpus and go up to 16Gb Ram - You'll have to go to the site to see all of the specs of the various model lines.

Please explain again the usefulness of Win XP 64

[way2trivial]

damn little, I have it..

but- xp64 is a subset of server 2003...

so OP is right sorta,

just because you can?

[way2trivial]

2 4gb raid 0 flash keys?

double the bandwidth?

4 2gb raid 0 flash keys?

with a tetrahub?

fix the dell issue

[way2trivial]

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?config_data=&c=us&cs=04&fb=1&kc=9&l=en&oc=bwcweg6 &X=9&Y=6

now you can have all 4 gb
(check the os)