Post: #26

(05-19-2015 03:47 PM)Alfa Wrote:  Look into a used thinkpad.

This is the route I prefer, but then again I get along fine without much of the graphical WWW. The keyboards though are gold for anyone who types seriously.

* BBinger earlier today replaced the fan in his thinkpad for the 4th time, uses OpenBSD as the machine's primary operating system, and mostly ignores the mobile app thing. People have to find machines that fit what they do.

(05-20-2015 01:01 PM)roberto Wrote:  Nice one. You'll have way a way bigger % of residual value in a 5 year old Mac compared to a 5 year old PC too.

Most of the machines that retain the greatest resale value are actually market failures. The DEC Alphas and the last generation of the Ultra Sparc machines before Oracle bought Sun come to mind. Resale value is the worst motivation to use when picking out a computer. When I was in middle school the district was selling black and white macs for $10 that today list on Ebay at $100+, these trends are to weird to follow seriously unless you want to become some kind of sommelier. It's best to go for what offers you the most utility in the now.

Post: #27

(05-21-2015 01:15 AM)BBinger Wrote:  

(05-20-2015 01:01 PM)roberto Wrote:  Nice one. You'll have way a way bigger % of residual value in a 5 year old Mac compared to a 5 year old PC too.

Most of the machines that retain the greatest resale value are actually market failures. The DEC Alphas and the last generation of the Ultra Sparc machines before Oracle bought Sun come to mind. Resale value is the worst motivation to use when picking out a computer. When I was in middle school the district was selling black and white macs for $10 that today list on Ebay at $100+, these trends are to weird to follow seriously unless you want to become some kind of sommelier. It's best to go for what offers you the most utility in the now.

You misunderstood me. I'm not saying keep it for twenty years and it will be worth a mint on eBay. I'm saying that a 5 year old Mac will still be worth 50% of the purchase price in three years. Case in point- a new Macbook Air is £750 ish in Britain. Three year old examples regularly sell for £450 on eBay. Get it from a decent store and there's a three year warranty. So that's £100 a year for warrantied use of decent kit that just works.

I'm doubtful you could buy any Windows machine and benefit from the same sort of resale percentages.

Post: #28

(05-21-2015 11:59 AM)roberto Wrote:  

(05-21-2015 01:15 AM)BBinger Wrote:  

(05-20-2015 01:01 PM)roberto Wrote:  Nice one. You'll have way a way bigger % of residual value in a 5 year old Mac compared to a 5 year old PC too.

Most of the machines that retain the greatest resale value are actually market failures. The DEC Alphas and the last generation of the Ultra Sparc machines before Oracle bought Sun come to mind. Resale value is the worst motivation to use when picking out a computer. When I was in middle school the district was selling black and white macs for $10 that today list on Ebay at $100+, these trends are to weird to follow seriously unless you want to become some kind of sommelier. It's best to go for what offers you the most utility in the now.

You misunderstood me. I'm not saying keep it for twenty years and it will be worth a mint on eBay. I'm saying that a 5 year old Mac will still be worth 50% of the purchase price in three years. Case in point- a new Macbook Air is £750 ish in Britain. Three year old examples regularly sell for £450 on eBay. Get it from a decent store and there's a three year warranty. So that's £100 a year for warrantied use of decent kit that just works.

I'm doubtful you could buy any Windows machine and benefit from the same sort of resale percentages.

Ah. Carry on then.

Post: #29

This bad boy delivered in only 2 days... and it's even lighter than my old 15" MBP!

Setting this up by customizing it and installing the necessary apps, and I'm going to purchase windows 8.1 to put on a partition so I can use bootcamp and VM ware.

Post: #30

I've built entire multi-tier (client, app server, database, web server, api server) distributed systems on 13" Windows laptops (one was a Dell with XP, the other with Windows 7) with VMWare Player and VirtualBox so needing a big machine is a myth. Just have images for the different OSs/platforms you need and a lot of RAM. I had images for Windows Server, Solaris, FreeBSD, even WinXP and Android phones, tablets.

If you're travelling or moving around, I recommend what I did: I bought two laptops and configured them identically: same programs, same configuration, same file system structure, basically mirrors of each other.

The idea is if you lose your main rig or get it stolen, you've got another one ready to get shipped to you wherever you are. Right before I fly out, I copied everything to my backup rig and boxed it up, ready to ship. Then have someone you trust hold it for you til you need it.

Post: #31

^ I like the idea of having a backup stateside that can get shipped to you, but wouldn't discs be just as effective as a whole machine? This way you can go out and buy a new more modern rig if an unfortunate event happened. Also, you can make several backup disks and keep them in various places in your apartment. Store them in the cloud, etc.

I have a MBP (last year's model) with Parallels and VS 2013. It works well for me.

I've also installed a small amount of C4 with a gps-remote triggering device so if it gets stolen I can blow the machine and all those within a 100 ft radius to smithereens.

Post: #32

(05-19-2015 11:32 AM)Menace Wrote:  Apple just released an updated MBP with ForceTouch touch pad. After a certain point, you get tired of wasting time configuring computers, and just want to do your work. Get a new MPB, migrate your old one to it, and be up and running seamlessly. I would never do a hackintosh. You can run Windows in VMware.

Stick with MBP. You're a pro and familiarity with your tools is paramount. Gimmicky and plasticky ASUS'es and others try to match Apple but always fall short (and just fall apart, too).

And I've been a Windows guy for most of my life.

Post: #33

(05-25-2015 01:48 PM)Onto Wrote:  Store them in the cloud, etc

This. I am starting to think it would be worthwhile to purchase cloud space so I can store all my project, work, personal, and even software installation files - I mean everything - on the cloud.

Especially if I am traveling and stateside is a 16+ hour flight away, and my livelihood is based on my laptop and internet access. So, should anything happen to my physical drive or have my laptop stolen or whatever (that said, should I insure my laptop?)... I should be able to get another one in a pinch, reinstall all my software, and within a few hours, I should be back up and running without missing a beat.

Post: #34

A backup HD and the cloud are good as plan B or C. The problem with them is that a laptop that costs $500 in the US is going to cost $1500-2000 outside - if you can get the same one.

One thing to consider is the customs policy for importing of electronics of the country you're in. If your laptop gets stolen, definitely report it and get a copy of the police report so when your package arrives and gets held up in customs, you have proof that you're sending it to yourself for you own use.

Backing up individual files in the cloud is also good, as plan D. The problem, at least for me, is that my rig takes almost a week to setup & configure. The laptop itself several days to install & configure the 20-25 programs I use and several more days for the server virtual images. A backup of the ghost image is better.

Another problem is that I trust cloud backup as much as I trust a biker gang in a dark alley. If your client is a bank, hedge fund, in healthcare, etc, your code & files should go into their private network share drive or SCM - not Dropbox or Github.

Post: #35

Thanks bad guy, very informative. Learning something new every day!

I may not need it right now, but eventually I'm going to purchase an external SSD drive just in case.

What exactly do you mean by backup of the "ghost" image, and how do you go about creating one?

Post: #36

A ghost image is a snapshot of your OS/HardDrive at a particular moment in time. You can google it and find a site that has instructions on how to do that. It saves it as a file that you can save on a CD/DVD or another Hard drive, etc.

My MBP died in the Philippines, fortunately I had an iPad Air with me as a backup. I wasn't working so no big deal. I took it to a repair shop at the top of Greenbelt 1 in Manila and had the guy open it for me so I could remove the hard drive and then gave him the rest as a thank you. He was happy.

I looked into replacing it with a new MBP and while it was more expensive it wasn't 2x as much, let alone 4x as much. It might've been 20-30% more if I remember right, but they didn't have configurations with higher RAM and Hard drives in stock so that would take 4-8 weeks to come in, and I had my iPad Air so I decided to wait.

Post: #37

(05-25-2015 06:05 PM)Onto Wrote:  but they didn't have configurations with higher RAM and Hard drives in stock so that would take 4-8 weeks to come in, and I had my iPad Air so I decided to wait.

Ahh that's another thing I have to consider. That takes me back to bad guy's plan A of having a mirror laptop ready to ship to me in case something happens to my original. Or I could just take it with me anywhere I go and keep it under lock & key.

Post: #38

For a coding rig, you should be okay with 4gb of ram and a regular HDD so having a dummy rig would be okay.