NYCPHP Meetup

[Michael B Allen]

On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 8:50 PM, Allen Shaw
<allen at twomiceandastrawberry.com> wrote:
> Who here is happy with their current development machine?  Would you care to
> share your hardware specs?
>
> I'm looking to upgrade my 7-year old desktop for something with a little
> more snap.  Hopefully under $1000, but it's been ages since I shopped
> prices, so clue me in if I'm naive.

Hi Allen,

Every year or so I just go to Best Buy and get a cheapo desktop with
gigabit ethernet and as much RAM as possible. You can probably find an
ASUS or ACER for $600, you don't pay shipping, you get instant
gratification and it's easy to take back if there's something wrong
with it. They're usually super ugly (like a chrome-plated Star Trek
shuttle craft) but the only technical concern I would have is Linux
hardware support. Sometimes the cheapo machines have very new and
unusual hardware that Linux doesn't quite support yet. But knowing
this I always just get something with an Intel chipset with everything
onboard. Meaning get Intel video, Intel network, Intel usb, etc. One
time I got a machine that didn't recognize the network card. It was
some obscure Realtek or some such. I had to download a driver form
their site and build it. Otherwise, the cheapo Best Buy machines have
always just worked great for me.

Incidentally I usually also try to get a 64 bit CPU with Intel VT or
AMD-V capability so that I can run 64 bit guests in VMWare Server.
This is important for testing all of the different flavors of OS. If
someone says your thing doesn't work on Vista SP-this with IE that,
then you can replicate that exactly without too much trouble.

Mike

-- 
Michael B Allen
PHP Active Directory Integration
http://www.ioplex.com/plexcel.html