For quite some time, I pondered getting a netbook. The small form factor and the immense battery life were very tempting to me. Not to mention that they are very affordable which would give me instant approval from the wife :-). The only thing that discouraged me was the small screen. As most developers know, screen real estate makes a big difference when it comes to development. 1024 x 768 is about as small as you want to go. When I saw some screenshots of an Eee PC running Visual Studio I quickly realized that it was not for me.
After reading many reviews, I decided that I needed at least a 15" display. I also decided that a widescreen display would be preferred. I also immediately eliminated any laptop that did not have at least a 7,200 RPM hard drive. On almost any system you buy these days the disk will be the bottleneck. Lets face it, memory is cheap and processors have shifted to the multi-core architecture. The only thing that really has stayed the same is the traditional hard disks. Of course SSD is on the rise but the price for a 500GB SSD hard drive would probably cost more than my entire laptop. Anyways, I can always replace the hard drive later on when the prices become a little more reasonable.
After days of reading reviews and much contemplation, I ended up buying a HP Pavilion dv6t Quad Edition Notebook. The laptop is an absolute power house. It features an Intel Core i7-720QM quad core processor, 6MB L2 Cache and a 1333MHZ FSB. It came stock with 4GB of RAM and is expandable to 8GB. I can run SQL Server and Visual Studio without even a hiccup. The machine is absolutely perfect for development. Here are the complete specs:
- Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
- Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-720QM Processor (1.6GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 1333MHz FSB)
- FREE Upgrade to 4GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm) from 2GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
- FREE Upgrade to 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive from 320GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
- 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 230M
- 15.6" diagonal High Definition LED HP Brightview Widescreen Display (1366x768)
- LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW with Double Layer Support
- Webcam + Fingerprint Reader
- Intel Wireless-N Mini-card with Bluetooth
- 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
The laptop came with Windows 7 x64 Home Premium. However, as soon as I got the laptop I immediately formatted the machine and upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate Edition. Luckily, I have an MSDN subscription so I was able to save some money by doing the OS upgrade myself. Besides, I am not a big fan of all the "SPAM" that HP installs on a new laptop. I prefer to start fresh with a clean install. For those of you who are still using Vista or XP...I must say, Windows 7 rocks! I haven't been this happy with an operating system ever. It has been a while since Microsoft has delivered something this good.
When friends come over I like to show off a little by pulling up task manager. When they see the 8 processor windows they are generally in awe. The reason you see 8 windows is because each core has 2 processing threads.The machine yields a Windows Experience Index of 5.9. For a laptop this is an outstanding score. Again, the bottleneck is the 7200 RPM disk.
From a construction standpoint the laptop is very well built. If you pick the laptop up from the corner you will feel no flex at all. The only downfall to the laptop would be that it has a slightly enlarged power supply and the battery life with the 6-cell battery will only buy you about 2 hours. I would recommend buying the 12-cell battery if you travel a lot.
When using the laptop I would recommend always placing it on a flat solid surface. The Core i7 processor tends to generate a fair amount of heat. Most of the heat seems to be dissipated from the back left bottom corner of the laptop. If you like to sit on the couch and use your laptop just make sure that you prop the laptop up so that back left bottom corner gets some air.
The normal price for this laptop is $1,399 when you build it on HP's website. However, I was fortunate enough to find $400 in stackable coupon codes. Overall, I am extremely happy with my choice. The laptop is very well built and the performance is beyond my expectations. If you are looking for a new development rig then I would highly recommend picking up a HP Pavilion dvt6.
