Suggested minimum hardware requirements - Debate and poll

[maxamoto]

Hey all, hoping you can resolve a debate for me regarding minimum hardware requirements. I'm starting school for my CS degree (and also finishing up my A+ and MCSE certs), and some of the classes I need to take require Server 2003, XP Pro, Office 2003, SQL server 2000, Exchange server 2003, Visual Studio 2005 and of course, VMware. Obviously, I will be running Active Directory on my Server 2003 partition. Now, I'm not going to go into details regarding the debate, but rathar ask the community what, given an unlimited budget, would they consider an acceptable laptop purchase point and hardware specs for the above tasks. As always, I appreciate the help and look forward to your replies. Cheers!

[jondercik]

get 2gb for this and buy VMware workstation. It will save you money from having to purchase additional computers. VMWare is one of the best products out there.

[boggen]

your not needing a good video thats for sure.... so what ever comes with system or just an el'cheopa video card.

with this being more of a test machine, and not a full blown server setting in someone buisness. atleast gig ram. good deal maybe 1.5 to 2gig max.

cpu, atleast 2.0ghz. but also not lastest and greatest. latest and greatest will drop in price from being a 1000 bucks to 200 bucks in a few months. not worth it.

atleast 80 gig hard drive. pending on how old OS you planing on dumping onto a multi boot system. may want to stay below the 120gig barrier to keep some hair.

would suggest external hard drive encloser with a few 10 gig or elcheapo hard drives that you could turn into hot swapples for running os / configs from.

[Vitalix]

Exchange 2003 on a laptop?? Yikes!

We have a duallie Xeon with 4GB RAM and it's sluggish.

VMWare and Vis Stud alone will need 2GB RAM. None of them are extremely CPU extensive, except SQL Server.

I would get a light laptop for XP and Office and Vis Stuf, and get a separate box at home (via VPN or the like) for testing out your Exchange, Server 2k3, and SQL.

[maxamoto]

Exchange 2003 on a laptop?? Yikes!

We have a duallie Xeon with 4GB RAM and it's sluggish.

VMWare and Vis Stud alone will need 2GB RAM. None of them are extremely CPU extensive, except SQL Server.

I would get a light laptop for XP and Office and Vis Stuf, and get a separate box at home (via VPN or the like) for testing out your Exchange, Server 2k3, and SQL.

I wish that was an option. Unfortunately, I am stuck in Kuwait as a reserve component in the US Army, and space is at a premium. All the courses are distance courses through my community college back home, and from what I've seen in the syllabi (is that even a word?), some pretty extensive stuff is required. The software is no problem; I can get VS2005 for a hundred bucks, and the server OSs for a couple hundred through the school bookstore. I'm not really worried about the cost of the hardware requirements at this point, but rathar just making sure my original predictions weren't too, uh, excessive. Thank you!

Edited January 11, 2006 by maxamoto

[nmX.Memnoch]

Make sure you get a 7200RPM drive in that laptop. It'll kill the battery faster but something tells me that isn't your priority with this purchase anyway.

The VMWare stuff can be disk intensive...as can the Exchange stuff. The faster hard drive will help it run smoother on the laptop.

[maxamoto]

your not needing a good video thats for sure.... so what ever comes with system or just an el'cheopa video card.

Hmm, you don't think the OS and other apps in general will benefit from a moderately decent video card? I mean, gaming is not a priority with this machine (I have an xbox out here for that), but I would be interested to know if anyone has benchmarks or RW experience with low / high graphics solutions and general business apps. My thoughs are that 128Mb of VRAM might help with at least opening the applications for administrative purposes and startup times, while the system RAM, CPU and HDD will have more of an impact on the backend performance of things like Exch2003 and SQL2000. Thoughts on this, anyone?

[jcarle]

If you're doing comp science, you should go for a minimum of a 1GB of Ram, 2GB preferable. CPU speed is less important. You won't likely end up doing things that require high cpu usage, but you will end up using large program that are memory hogs. IE: Dev Studio type software, photo editing, etc...

[maxamoto]

If you're doing comp science, you should go for a minimum of a 1GB of Ram, 2GB preferable. CPU speed is less important. You won't likely end up doing things that require high cpu usage, but you will end up using large program that are memory hogs. IE: Dev Studio type software, photo editing, etc...

VS2005 is required at this point. I'll have to wait on the RAM for now though

Thanks for your help!