Get fast computers for your developers

I've just been through an office move at a client site and packing it up got me thinking about the choices that companies make for their staff when it comes to computer hardware. Most users can benefit in some way from having faster computers, with bigger screens, and better input pe­riph­er­als. Cor­po­ra­tions have a tendency to make con­ser­v­a­tive choices and to pay above the market price for standard hardware. Whilst frus­trat­ing for normal users, this is an absolute per­for­mance killer for developers like me.

Compare the spec­i­fi­ca­tions of my home machine to my work computer:

My home con­fig­u­ra­tion can be purchased for around $1200 today, and is many times more powerful than the work con­fig­u­ra­tion. The ability to run multiple virtual machines as if they are real desktops gives a fantastic boost to my developer pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. The screen real estate is beneficial for rapidly updating web pages, and the fast hard drives ensures that Windows keeps up with what I'm doing.

Since I don't run Antivirus at home I run as a user without ad­min­is­tra­tive rights. If I need to test out new pieces of software from the Internet I use a Windows XP Virtual Machine running Windows OneCare Antivirus. Removing the per­for­mance overhead of antivirus means that I get the most per­for­mance out of my hardware whilst still staying safe. Did you know that simply running Windows with a standard user account can eliminate the threat of most Windows malware?

My advice to anyone buying hardware for de­vel­op­ment use is to buy the best performing hardware you can afford. Don't focus on any single component as skipping a dual screen con­fig­u­ra­tion is not worth the price of a faster processor.

Tagged with antivirus, computer, directx, intel, nvidia and vista.