Brian A. Thomas .com

In order to become a better developer, I figure these are the things I need. So if anyone out there has a ton of money just wasting away and looking for a good cause…
A good laptop so I can work on my programs when things are dead at work… which was often, but starting today I’ll be by myself each night from 6 PM on. This laptop should be a Core Duo processor, 17″ or bigger WUXGA display (1920 x 1200) with a very good nVidia or ATI graphics accelerator with preferably 256 MB RAM, as this will ensure it will allow all of Windows Vista features to work properly. A dual layer DVD burner (which needs to be able to burn CDs as well, though almost all of them do anyhow, so a nearly moot point), or Blu-ray burner (I think Sony is the only one to make a laptop with a Blu-ray burner on the market right now, and it matches all the other specs needed as well). It should have Windows XP Pro or Media Edition installed. 1 GB RAM or more. The hard drive should be at least 150GB, preferably 180GB or more. It looks like this is about $2000 on up to $3600 or so (the $3600 version is with Blu-ray so that is why it is a few hundred more). The price is generally higher then other laptops as the graphics chip, the widescreen WUXGA display and a few things like that.
Of course I also need a full version of Visual Studio, either Standard or Professional. The standard version is only $40 if you can get the academic edition, otherwise an upgrade edition is about $161 (I am not 100% sure I still have the CDs of the old version to make the upgrade install) and the full version is $246. The Professional version adds a few good tools that would help a lot. The academic edition is only $93, with the full version costing $686. (All Visual Studio prices based on prices from Provantage, a national programmers catalog that is also local store formally known as Programmers Connection.)
HelpStudio 2 would be a nice bonus… hey, the laptop likely was close to $2000 to $3600, so what is another $470?

Tags: General, Programming