Development Desktop Specifications

Question

I was looking into buying a new desktop, and was wondering what I should be most concerned with when looking at a prospective system. I have a personal leaning toward Dell, as I have had consistently good service from them, but am open to other systems.

I know that you need "lots of RAM" for example, but how do you define that? What constitutes a lot that would not require you to upgrade your system every 6 months? What would you describe as the minimum system requirements for a developer? I know I can look at all the software I use, see what their recommended system requirements are, and then work out my personal minimum system requirements, but I would rather hear from experience which factors make the biggest difference.

As a note, I personally use Visual Studio 2008, Eclipse, and Adobe Director as the primary tools.

Answer 1

I just bought a new machine with 16G of ram, running Vista 64bit and Fast disks. Also installed VMWare workstation and am simultaneously running XP, 3 copies of NT server (2003 and 2008) as well as SQL Server 2005 and 2008....the thing doesn't even hiccup. I am replacing 8 machines in my home office with this one...its amazing. The lectricity savings alone make it a great deal to have.

I almost pulled the trigger on a 32G machine but someone beat me to it (from the Dell outlet). Awesome deals on machines there when they are available. My machine I could have bought "new" for almost 3X as much as I paid at the outlet - and it still came with a 3 year NBD warranty.