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20030722 Tuesday July 22, 2003

RE: Which new laptop would you buy? Thanks to all who left comments about my (possible) new laptop purchase. I did some more tests today, and I'm going to have to go with a Windows machine, especially since I hope to replicate the performance I get from my machine at work (Dell Optiplex GX260: 2 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Windows 2000 SP4):

  • Opening Photoshop (7.0): 3 seconds
  • Starting Eclipse (3.0 M2): 6 seconds
  • Running "ant clean package-web" on AppFuse: 18 seconds
  • Running "ant rebuild" on Roller: 36 seconds

Yep, that's right, my (work) desktop is twice as fast when opening Eclipse and 4 times faster opening Photoshop (than the Powerbook). So if I get a 3 GHz laptop with 1 GB RAM, it should be even faster than that right?

Hibersonic Aviator ZX7 Alienware Area-51m

Right now, I'm looking at the Alienware Area-51m or the Hibersonic Aviator ZX7. At first glance, I'm leaning towards Area-51m, although the Bluetooth USB Adapter (vs. integrated Bluetooth) is disappointing. The Hibersonice has a 17" screen, but that doesn't seem to be that big of deal (after hearing y'all speak up). Also the Hibersonic has a 802.11b NIC, where the Alienware one has a 802.11g. Posted in General at Jul 22 2003, 09:11:05 AM MDT 5 Comments

Comments:

Just curious... How many times do you have to _open_ photoshop during the day... I load my apps once, first thing in the morning, and just leave them all running... For me, the more productive measure is how fast the apps run, and how well they all play together.

Posted by D'Arcy Norman on July 22, 2003 at 09:33 AM MDT #

I agree. Opening these apps seems to be a CPU/RAM-intensive operation, so that's why used these activities to benchmark. The latest two I've added (building AppFuse and Roller) are probably better benchmarks since this is that I do most often throughout the day.

Posted by Matt Raible on July 22, 2003 at 09:40 AM MDT #

Just to be fair your PowerBook, which is twice as slow as your Windows desktop (2 Ghz), has only a 667 Mhz G4 in it. I would have expected the PB to more then twice as slow as your work machine. Of course maybe it is for building appfuse and roller but you didn't post those numbers. Personally I would recommend the Area-51. I have an Alienware desktop and it rocks!

Posted by Kurt on July 22, 2003 at 10:19 AM MDT #

The PowerBook numbers I posted yesterday (13 seconds Photoshop, 12.5 Eclipse) where from the latest and greatest 17" PowerBook (1 GHz, 512 MB RAM). So I guess that's why it's twice as slow - it has half the MHz. Who says MHz don't matter!? ;-)

Posted by Matt Raible on July 22, 2003 at 11:07 AM MDT #

The Aviator screen has the display resolution.... alienware does not. High res = good. .V

Posted by Vic on July 23, 2003 at 06:37 PM MDT #

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Matt Raible is a Web Architecture Consultant specializing in open source frameworks.
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