Laptops with Big RAM?

Fubari wonders: "Anybody know when laptops over 4gb might be coming out? Some of the dev-tools I want to run are just obscene RAM-pigs. On the desktop I'm using now (Win2003), it sucks up 1.6gb just to boot. By the time I log in and start doing work, it is stretching 2Gb. Move that to Vista, add a VM-Ware session or two, and I'm worried I'll be pushing 4Gb. I'm torn between buying a 4Bb-max laptop now, or some mini-desktop that can fit in a set of luggage wheels. A friend of mine suggested something like this, but my first choice would be something designed to be portable. Any suggestions?"

Harder than you think

[HardCase]

You've got a couple of problems to deal with. The first is power consumption - two 2GB modules will consume a crazy amount of power. It's quite surprising just how much power a couple of modules require. The second is space. Current DRAM components are too large to fit 2GB worth on a single SODIMM. Take a look at the space on a DDR2 UDIMM and you'll see that there's almost no extra room on one of them.

2GB SODIMMs are built - I've worked on some creative designs that stacked DRAM components to achieve the necessary density, but the modules aren't suited for laptops because they're too thick and a notebook can't provide the necessary cooling.

It seems to me that you're a year or two ahead of technology, I'm afraid.

-h-

32 bit windows can't have even 4GB RAM

[S3D]

Max addressable memory on 32bit XP pro (and probably Vista too) is 4GB, but that is with together videomemory. So actual useful RAM from 3 to 3.6 GB, depending on the board. Some system even only report 2 GB from 4. To have complete 4GB you have to use 64bit Windows. There exist 16 GB laptops, but they run Solaris IIRC.

16GB Dual-Proc SPARC

[KatTran]

http://www.tadpole.com/products/notebooks/bullfrog dp.asp [tadpole.com]

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Well...

[Pojut]

...you could always hop on Ebay and buy one of those old-school lunchbox style portable computers...just gut the innards and install your own stuff...

Heavier and larger than a laptop, but capable of carrying around a tower's computational power...not very convienient, I know, but still...it is an option...

Re:Find new dev tools.

[gstoddart]

I'll make the unreasonable suggestion, then -- stop tolerating something that needs so much RAM! Go back to vim/gcc -- or whatever, there are certainly some saner options for you.

But, he's said he's running specific development tools. It's not like he can suddenly change them en masse. He may have no choice but to run Vista, which by all accounts wants memory like you wouldn't believe.

He's also making the valid observation that he can forsee one or more virtual machines being hosted on this machine (I have a whole separate machine to host virtual PCs). Virtual machines are a huge help in development since you can wipe them out and start from scratch without any down time. it's a realistic thing to plan for. They're great for sandboxes and doing all sorts of testing.

The reality of it is, the tools he is running are probably something he can't escape -- those are the tools, and you can't replace Visual Studio with vim and gcc easily, as much as people like to think. Sometimes, you're stuck using those tools you're given, because that's what your company is going to use no matter what you like.

I wouldn't mind a laptop with 8 or 10 gigs of RAM, but I'd much rather have a reasonably efficient system so I don't have to pay for that much RAM.

Well, with the overheads of Vista, I can see it becoming such that a laptop can't possibly be used as a development machine. I know within my company, when I used to say I want 2GB or so on a machine, they would look at me like "who could possibly need that much RAM?"; now, it's commonplace. The reality is, 1GB of RAM on my development machine (older, needs an upgrade desperately) is a joke (cause using 1GB of RAM on a Windows machine means you're using >= 1GB of swap space).

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of vi (been using it for about 20 years), and I have good memories of using gcc back in the day -- but, I just never understand why the advice on Slashdot is to always migrate to tools which aren't applicable for the person at hand. If you write Windows software, you're probably using some big software to do it in.

Unfortunately, laptops have always trailed behind desktops in terms of how big you can make them. But, if you need the big-honking machine, and also need a laptop, you could be SOL.

Granted, I come from an era where having 8GB of ram on any machine (let alone one with a single user) would be absurd (unimagible in fact) -- but, it's awfully tough to develop enterprise software on mickey mouse machines. I bet there's quite a few people who could benefit from a laptop with > 4GB. I do agree with you that this is partly the fault of the OS for becoming so damned bloated. I just don't think it will help this particular gentleman's problem.

Cheers

Technical Consultants too

[onyxruby]

I'd love to be able to get something like this. I'm a technical consultant who travels and I have to remote into a lab server anytime I need to test / demonstrate something or the like.

I could easily run W2K3 server, SQL 2005 and host at least two VM sessions. One of these VM sessions would be a W2K3 server, with the other an XP client.

Since many of my clients tend to be places that are fairly paranoid I cant always access my lab remotely or hook up to their network. In essence I need a "lab in a box".

Laptop Idea

[jwilhelm]

How about a small, light laptop that you are comfortable using, paired with a powerful server back in the office. Pair the laptop with either an internal or external EVDO card (we use the Sprint Novatel EVDO cards), IPSec VPN back to the company, and then RDP into the server. Of course you could still run some applications (email, web, etc...) locally, but the really beefy stuff should run on the server. This has many performance advantages, but also reliability advantages in that your works can be on a server that is RAIDed and backed up. Additionally you can compile code and run tests on the server when you have to turn your laptop off.

Have you considered...

[hummassa]

that some people need to run the WHOLE shebang and on top of it simulate traffic/load conditions on the db server OR on the app server OR on the client and simluate hundreds/thousands of clients and that this requires immense amounts of RAM but is otherwise feasible to obtain more reliable results using virtualization? And that the same person might want to do it on the road (AKA: using the clients' tools, but away from the clients' control -- so (s)he can tweak the conditions at will) and that if you have 30-50 different enterprisey clients you don't want to have to connect remotely to your datacenter in other state -- you just want to load the whole thing in your laptop and see where is the fscking problem that makes an inventory entry take 5 minutes instead of 20 seconds, so the client will shell out the big bucks that this person deserves? (been there, done that, but in my consultant time I was hitting the road with 3-4 server-class machines in the luggage -- hotels probably hated me when the electrical bill came and yes, I carried some full-sized fire extinguishers with me also)