Laptop dilemma

S

Supremacy

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Sup,

I'm in a bit of a pickle about buying a laptop. I already have a decent i5 gaming rig, but I don't do very intense gaming with it (mainly dota / dota 2 / gw 2 when it comes out), nothing too intensive. I'm thinking of getting a laptop for work purposes, but I can't decide whether to sell my PC and get a sweet laptop (such as the ASUS gaming laptops), or keep my PC and just get a cheaper laptop in the range of R8k, but I really don't want the hassle of keeping files over 2 PC's.

I know the laptops never have the same performance of the desktops, but I really need a decent laptop for work, which mostly involves IDE's / compiling code. What do you guys suggest? My main requirements for the laptop for work purposes would be fast compilation / boot times, so possibly an SSD.
 
R8k can buy you a good laptop, and the resale value of desktop computers is terrible. If it were me I'd get a tablet, but that doesn't seem an option for you.
 
You'll always be better off with a desktop for development, because you can install more RAM, hard drive/SSD's and the processors are faster.
None of my colleagues who are doing development, do it on a laptop.

I suppose if you get a high-end gaming laptop that comes with 8-16GB of RAM, hard drive + extra space for SSD, you should be sorted for development too. The Sandy Bridge & Ivy Bridge mobile CPU's are pretty powerful. Like the Ivy Bridge i7-3520M is still well below (14000 points vs 10600 for multi-threaded, BUT 4500 vs 6000 in single-threaded) an i5 750 in Cinebench R10 in a multi-threaded environment.

Could you perhaps tell us what IDE's you're using and how big your projects are?

Like the one colleague of mine rebased the Polish repo and his i5 2400 took a couple of hours.

Many compilations and things still use just a single thread, so I'd guess you'd be good on these new Ivy Bridge laptops!
 
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Yea I definitely agree Pada, but I can't carry my tower to work every day. The projects are nothing huge in terms of compliation, mainly just website stuff, but rather the VM's and loadtime of the IDE's (some of them in the VM) are killer. I've had a look at http://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-G75VW-...01259479?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item2a1e8e28d7 - its really pricey, but buying a ~9k laptop and keeping the desktop works out to me spending the same amount of money if I were to sell my desktop, so I'm indifferent between the two options. I would want at least 4 years out of that laptop.

My current desktop is i5 2500k, GTX 560Ti, 4Gb RAM.

Possible laptops for non-replacement: http://www.wootware.co.za/dell-insp...670-15-6-full-hd-led-ivy-bridge-notebook.html
 
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