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Dell Designing Developer Oriented Laptop
jones_supa writes "Barton George, director of marketing for Dell's Web vertical reveals information about 'Project Sputnik', a laptop tailored for developer needs in web companies. 'We want to find ways to make the developer experience as powerful and simple as possible. And what better way to do that than beginning with a laptop that is both highly mobile and extremely stylish, running the 12.04 LTS release of Ubuntu Linux,' George ponders. He also gives a quick list of packages that the default installation could include. The machine will base on the XPS13, assessing a couple of its main hardware deficiencies along the way."
According to the article, this is a "6 month project to investigate an Ubuntu laptop. If successful, we have big plans for the effort." It's unclear how closely they are working with upstream, but there's mention of Canonical as a commercial partner so this may mean Dell is working to ensure some of their hardware Just Works (tm) with Ubuntu. The software side is so far just a customized install with developer tools preinstalled. Ars remains skeptical about Dell's strategy for GNU/Linux support, which may be warranted given their track record.
The one thing that they (Dell) and pretty much everyone else are missing is a decent screen resolution. 1366x768 and 1440x900 just don't cut it for development. They're barely useable for browsing.
Not if Dell is behind it. You saw what they did to Alienware.
I find significant dissonance with their two statements:
"ways to make the developer experience as powerful and simple as possible" and
"what better way to do that than beginning with a laptop that is both highly mobile and extremely stylish"
I was unaware that web designers did most of their work "in the field" away from modern conveniences like desks and dual monitors. I am also surprised that "stylish" is equated with "powerful and simple".
By the look of their press release, I'd say they are trying to convert all of the metrosexual Apple users to Dell brand users with shiny and an OSX-esque GUI. Function and capability don't appear to play into the equation much.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
As a developer, I need more vertical screen space: looking at code, looking at debuggers, editing long files.
I have two monitors at work: an ld 19" and 23". The 23" has less vertical screen space than the 19".
More vetical screen real estate would make a laptop more dev friendly
Developing on a 13 inch screen...
Developing on dual 30" screens is certainly nicer, but it you can't develop on a 13" screen, then you're not terribly effective. I developed good software on a netbook (1024x600), since I was travelling a lot and I valued the light weight (940g for a 20G EEE 900, with the lightest PSU I've ever used) and decent battery life over a big screen.
Once you're all set up with a decent folding editor and plenty of virtual screens, it's a surprisingly good environment.
And don't forget that unless you're flogging the CPU, the backlight is the biggest power draw, which scales with the square of the diagonal length. You simply cannot have a lightweight large screen laptop with a long battery life.
Remember, no matter how awesomely huge your screen space is, development is a bit of a drag if you have to write the code on paper when the battery runs out.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Do that and I buy one.