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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?"
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...
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.
with a few smaller ewes instead?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Did you bother even looking at the summary? The poster clearly asks about laptops with MORE than 4GB of RAM.
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-
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.
Utinam me logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant.
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.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
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.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
good god.
4 GB should be enough for everyone.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
Its completely plausable he's got Win 2k3 installed, depending on what he's developing.
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.
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
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.
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.
$diff terrorists hippies
$
$rm -rf *terrorists *hippies
4Bb : 32 bit^2 ?
I guess those would be Biggabits.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Why not have a big behemoth server sitting on the net somewhere and access it remotely using a nice wireless OSX machine?
...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...
Living With a Nerd
Someone didn't read the summary... :)
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.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Wow. Apparently 640K is enough for everybody.
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.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
He's already doing virtualization with VMWare, so what's a little bit more?
Damn- I messed up. I meant 512MB......a single stick though.....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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.
Okay... If necessary, you could use virtual memory for your two VM-Ware sessions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Agreed Emacs is just so ram hungry.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
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
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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? .NET and Java.
My laptop is mainly for surfing the internet, using regular MS Office apps and programming in
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.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
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.
http://saveie6.com/
Perhaps he is debugging the dev tools using the dev tools.
...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.
Loading...
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...:-)
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
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.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
/me salutes
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Nooo, he is considering buying a laptop with 4 Bb (Byte bits) of RAM.
Take off every 'sig' !!
if all that you want is Big RAM.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
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.
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.
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.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
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.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
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.)
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
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
'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.
640k is enough for everyone...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
2 Gig running Win 2k3 Server and a developement enviroment? No ease of use is an excuse for that.
... It's been said a million times in this story allready, but still:
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
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.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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".
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!)
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.
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!
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.
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.
Big RAM huh? I dunno, those SO-DIMMs are pretty small.
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.
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)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
You could try putting a flash drive in your laptop and using it as swap space.
No, I will not work for your startup
Ha ha. You fail at getting into the GNAA
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 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.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
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.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Needing over 4GB for something like this seems just insane. Are you absolutely sure you couldn't rethink your software choices?
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)
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.
Some people really do work with large datasets.
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetail s.aspx/xpsnb_m2010?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19/
Might fit the bill.
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
"Powers. I have them."
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.
that doesn't mean it's not a solution to a problem that doesn't yet exist
damn little, I have it..
but- xp64 is a subset of server 2003...
so OP is right sorta,
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2 4gb raid 0 flash keys?
double the bandwidth?
4 2gb raid 0 flash keys?
with a tetrahub?
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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)
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