Brennan’s Blog

A new computer from Dell is on that way that will easily run multiple virtual environments and finally allow my laptop to go portable again. The new computer is a Dimension C521 with an Athlon 64 processor. That is the one with a small form factor. But since it has a 64 bit processor I am not limited to 2GB of memory like my laptop so I bumped it up to 4GB. The new computer is also a dual processor which could be helpful with how I intend to use it. The best part is that I got it all for under $1000 which I did not think would be possible with that much memory.

With my laptop I have multiple external hard drives connected via FireWire 800 which hold onto tons of files (MDSN downloads, screencasts, podcasts, etc) as well as my Virtual PC environments. The problem with the configuration is that I have to keep the external drives connected so my portable laptop is effectively tied to the desk. The new Dimension desktop can give me back that portability and give my development environment a full 2GB of memory with a full 2GB left over for the host system and potentially another couple of virtual environments with modest memory requirements, such as a Windows 2003 or FreeBSD image.

I will be able to sit out on my balcony with the laptop and remote into these environments. I could even poke a hole in the incoming internet connection to allow access to Remote Desktop from my office or a coffee shop. I remote into my web server all of the time, so it should be more than reasonable for performance. In fact, I think it will perform very well. I will always hook it up to the fastest external drives as the computer ages and I can update the memory whenever I need a boost. The processor could be a concern in a couple of years, but a dual Athlon 64 should be sufficient for several years since the real bottleneck is disk access speed.

In another few months I could get a nice new MacBook. The only thing that has held me back is that fact that I still need to use Visual Studio for development which clearly runs on Windows. A MacBook can remote into the Dimension desktop just as easily as a PC so I should get the best of both worlds. Now I just have to figure out a solution for home theater. It seems to me that Apple TV and the XBox Media Center are not complete solutions in themselves. I have been waiting for a product to fill that need completely.