Suggestions for Developer/Programmer/Light Designer PC

Its time to renew my two "old" 2003 computers and would like you guys to
suggest what should I buy. I am open to buy or even build my own.

I basically use two computers, one as kind of a server where I store all the software,
ebooks, photos, movies, games, etc. and the second one I use to program with
XAMP/Eclipse/Aptana/JSEclipse and all the productivity software. Also all the open
source graphic design programs...

What are the specs of your machines? What do you recommend?

duo or quad processors?
2-4 gigas? (this one is easy)
two monitors or one 22" one?
2 HD or more?
tape backup or amazon s3?
dvd, optical, etc.

my budget: around 1500-2000 usd each computer...

Thanks in advance for your recommendations...

Get a Mac. I just gave away my last lingering PC, which I haven’t even plugged in for over two years.

I’d definitely look at a new 24" iMac indeed with the 2.8GHz Core2 Extreme, running Parallels or Fusion for testing sites in IE7/IE6. Definitely 4GB of RAM.

You can set up a local development environment in about 15 minutes, including download time, complete with Apache, Postfix, MySQL and PHP super easily.

As far as backup goes, S3 sounds great, but I’d also burn incremental backups off to DVDs and store those locally as well (what if your ’net connection goes down during a critical backup?) ... maybe even put in a RAID-5 multi-terabit local NAS for backup and media storage too (start your NAS explorations here: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/85/93/), and still come within your budget.

update: the Thecus 5200PRO and Mac OS X iSCSI initiator software seems very compelling to me for a backup and RAID storage subsystem

Thanks for the comments Susan and Ryan...

Your baby iMac 2.8GHz comes out to $3000USD with 4G Ram... ouch..... its a very nice
box for a bit too expensive don’t you think... with 2G RAM goes down to $2299 a little
better...

Thanks for the tip on the Thecus... I like them a lot and make a lot of sense for now and
for future expansion... the 5200PRO is really nice but they also have smaller solutions...
I will definitely consider buying one fo them... I specially like that you can have multi RAID
configurations in the same storage "appliance".

Toms Hardware has good suggestions on build your own workstations for about $1100...
maybe two of those would do it, maybe one PC and one iMac would be nice.

Thanks again...

Never buy RAM from Apple, as it’s insanely expensive. 4GB kit for $240: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/iMac_Core_2_Duo/DDR2/

I’ve built myself a much cheaper alternative setup, and I’m very happy with it. I have an e6300 Core 2 Duo with just 1GB of RAM and two 160 GB internal HDs. I may get another GB of RAM eventually, but so far I can’t say I’ve felt I really need it. Except for digital video editing, I think that 1GB is sufficient (as long as you don’t run Vista).

I also have a couple of network hard drives, the best one being a 160 GB Buffalo LinkStation. These work very well as file servers, and you can actually FTP into the LinkStation and do a whole lot more if you hack the firmware (including running a web server from it; it’s a PowerPC-based Linux server in a tiny little box). These never go down and require almost no maintenance, and you can easily travel with them if you need to.

I mostly use Ubuntu on my PC, and I’m definitely sold on it as my primary OS. It’s super fast, way slicker than OSX with Compiz Fusion installed, and almost all the software I need is available for it. And of course it’s all free (as in beer and speech).

Every once in a while I really want to use Photoshop instead of the Gimp, and lately I need to create Flash files a lot also, so I dual-boot into my old Windows XP installation for that. I spend 99% of my computer time in Ubuntu, however, and I don’t miss Windows at all (on the contrary!). I have IE6 running via CrossOver Office, and I can also run IE7 via a virtual XP installation, so I don’t need to leave Ubuntu for much while designing.

My PC cost me about $600 to build (given that I already had the monitor, keyboard, and mouse), and a new Buffalo LinkStation will run you about $200. If you need to buy a new monitor and whatnot on top of that, you’d probably spend about $1,000 to duplicate my setup. Personally I find that it’s more than adequate for everything that I need to do, so you might want to consider something along these lines as well.

I do all my development on an old G4 powerbook.
For browser testing I have home made core 2 duo with 2Gb RAM running Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) and IEs4Linux.
I prefer to do my coding in TextMate on OS X, but gEdit (the default text editor for Ubuntu) can be set up to make text editing REALLY nice.

-sD-
Dr. Scotty Delicious, Scientist DFPA.

There are so many excellent text editors for Linux that the biggest problem I’ve had has been choosing one (I’m currently using Bluefish, although gEdit is very nice as well).

Zap, thanks for sharing your setup and suggestions. On further "research" I found that the Thecus
do not have a great record... around 50% of people that own one mention that it does not work properly
it corrupts the data or just doesnt work, and that tech/customer service is practically non-existent...
its a pity because it looks like a great solution.

The buffalo linkstations are cheap, look great and people like them, but it is just one HD so if it goes caput... well
all goes caput! But for the value it offers seems that I am going that way. Your setup is very close to the one I am planning on building, I will use an e6600, one wd caviar and 2gigas ram for now, also a gts 8800 graph card.

I was planning on using Kubuntu, what are the main differences with ubuntu? I thought that kubuntus graphic environment was more polished...

Ryan thanks for the link for the iMac memory... amazing how much cheaper you can get it... my question is do I
buy the 4GHz for $240 and what do i do with the 1 giga that comes with the box?

Thanks for all the suggestions...

Quote from: charliez at Aug 31, 2007, 10:16 PM

I was planning on using Kubuntu, what are the main differences with ubuntu? I thought that kubuntus graphic environment was more polished..,

Ubuntu uses the Gnome Desktop Environment while Kubuntu uses KDE (K Desktop Environment). There are some variations on default installed apps, but the core is the same. Just a matter of what you prefer. The system requirements for Gnome are slightly more modest, but it sounds like you are getting a decent machine with a good graphics card, so if you like KDE better, go with Kubuntu. I am a fan of KDE myself.

-sD-
Dr. Scotty Delicious, Scientist.DFPA.