Taking the Plunge: Upgrading Dev Machines to Macs
Taking some of my own advice, I have started the transition of developer machines at Axosoft. Our previous dev environment was:
- Dell Latitude D630 Notebooks
- 4GB RAM
- 7200 RPM Drives
- 2.1Ghz Core 2 Duo
- 2 x 20″ Dell LCDs (1600×1200 resolution)
- Docking station (to allow 2 monitors)
Here’s what a setup looked like:
There’s a great story behind the pink pony in the picture, but that’s for another blog :-)
So we just started a transition for our developers to a Mac Pro setup.
- Mac Pro With:
- 2 x 2.8Ghz quad-core Xeon (8-cores total)
- 6GB RAM (buy memory upgrade elsewhere, much cheaper)
- 500GB Drive
- Apple 30″ Cinema Display (2560×1600 resolution)
So here’s what the new setup looks like:
These workstations are absolutely amazing. They are the world’s fastest workstations for running Windows, and of course, they are the world’s fastest for running OS X. The idea is that our developers now have the best of both worlds and they have the flexibility to meet changing Axosoft demands. With such blazingly fast machines, they could choose to run Windows in a virtual environment and still run it faster than their old setup.
One question you might have is why did we switch to desktops from laptops? We had initially gone with laptops to allow for easier portability of the machines in case of travel, meetings, etc. However, about 51 out of 52 weeks of the year, the laptops didn’t move from the desk. For the 1 week that they did, the developers determined it wasn’t worth giving up the performance boost that comes from a desktop.
Lets see what develops…
Of course! I used to cringe when someone would say Mac. I wondered ‘how would I continue to develop .NET apps with a Mac.’ With Parallels and VMs its quite possible. I look forward to hearing more about this over time.
New virtual machines under vmware fusion are contained in a single “file”, so for those 1 week a year traveling just have a macbook available and copy over the file, when done copy it back and remove it from the macbook.
I switched last November to doing all my development on a mac with vmware fusion. I was already using vmware workstation on my notebook so the switch was really easy.
Dan, great idea about the 1 week away.
Our developers all have unique ideas on how to setup their Mac Pros, so we’re getting different setups. I’ll have to report back as to what becomes the standard (Parallels/Boot Camp/Fusion/MS’s new VM Solution). Stay tuned.
Hi! I have a question.
If we have a PC and a Mac equally powerful, Is Windows still running faster on the Mac?
Antonio, an equally powerful Mac or PC would run Windows at the same speed. However, the Mac Pro is the fastest Mac or PC Workstation in the world right now.
Two years ago, I had a hard time at my company getting a Mac Mini for testing. Now they’re everywhere and more and more devs are switching platforms. I can’t even describe what a huge shift this is for Apple.
You could always buy a cheap laptop and remote into your desktop. Thats a nice dev machine though :P
I’m developer and you could improve your developer machines with a fast SATA hard disk ( Western Digital Raptor ( 10k, 300Gb )). I have one. It improves performance and worth.
Are they the world’s fastest workstations for Windows according to a report from Apple, or a third party? Apple lied before in claiming their G5 computers were the world’s fastest (these ads were eventually banned in the UK).