Anyone using ultrabook for development?

[ranjith]

With so many choice on thin and "mobile" laptops, I am thinking of switching from my Apple MBP 15" for smaller laptop.

Is anyone using ultrabook for development purpose and have success stories with eclipse and an app. server running pretty decently on it?

Answers appreciated. 

[Casper Bang]

A Macbook Air has no trouble pulling an IDE and an application server, although I don't use it as a primary development machine. It's my subjective feeling though that modern ivy-bridge ultrabooks with an SSD, are now fast enough to support most development tasks. In a way Intel confirms this by making the upcoming successor architecture (Haswell) favor a reduction of TDP (17W -> 10W) rather than performance.

[Andreas Johansson]

I'm using a MacBook Air (13') and are very happy with it performance wise. The only need for a "larger" computer in my opinion is if you are doing graphics oriented tasks and therefore need a discrete GPU. The time where the smaller computers are a lot slower than a ordinary sized laptop is in the past, at least in the 10-13' range. If you are going for a smaller screen you should be a bit concerned of the resolution though so that you can fit everything you need on a single page, otherwise you will probably not be as productive as before in your day to day work.  

Good luck!

On Monday, October 8, 2012 5:48:18 AM UTC+2, ranjith wrote:

[Raul Guiu]

I use a Asus Zenbook UX31E with Ubuntu. I agree with Andreas, screen size is the biggest obstacle. I usually have open Chrome with over 10-20 tabs open (I am bad closing things), Eclipse, SublimeText, Postgres admin tool (plus Postgres DB in the backend). I sometimes push it to the limit and miss a desktop. I don't miss my previous computer a MBP 15'', SSD is a big improvement. 

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[Ben Smith-Mannschott]

I use a 2010 MBA as a secondary development machine and am pleased
with the battery life and performance, but I don't develop things that
have to be hosted on an app server. Eclipse and Emacs run well enough.
I find the SSD makes up for the relative lack of CPU performance (the
2010 MBA is still a Core2 Duo).

But, for a opposing viewpoint see: http://technomancy.us/160

// Ben

[Jim Cheesman]

Did you have any problems getting Ubuntu to run on your Zenbook? 

[Raul Guiu]

Some nasty problems with sudden shutdowns  while  plugin and unplugging the power cable. With the kernel 3.5.3 is a lot better and is not happening. Everything else worked out of the box. In Ubuntu's website you can find good pages with possible issues. 

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[Reinier Zwitserloot]

My only machine right now is a late 2010 macbook air 11". Yeah, the really REALLY slow ones. A fresh clean build of lombok takes ~45 seconds on this thing, and a buddy of mine who bought a new desktop PC with all the frills can do the same thing in about 8 seconds.

Ouch.

Nevertheless, my machine actually feels faster in day-to-day because of the SSD. Apple more or less correctly nailed it on how to build ultrabooks: Make it a slow as crap processor so battery life is awesome and no matter what you do, you don't even hear the fans, and bank on the SSD to make it not feel like a machine from yesteryear.

Having said that, I'm strongly considering selling this one and buying the most recent MBA because they did a lot of work on making the processor faster.

It's a good thing I almost always shortcut the development process by using a hot-swapping debugger (eclipse's, in my case); I rarely actually build anything from scratch.

[Casper Bang]

On Monday, October 15, 2012 1:32:02 PM UTC+2, Reinier Zwitserloot wrote:

Having said that, I'm strongly considering selling this one and buying the most recent MBA because they did a lot of work on making the processor faster.

Holy crap, Apple started making x86 CPU's now too?! I knew they suffered big-time from NIH syndrome but still. ;)

[Fabrizio Giudici]

Resuming this discussion at the light of recent news. Apple has just added
a 13" with Retina display. Premised that I'm not going to change laptop
until I get 768GB/1TB of SSD at a reasonable price (it might happen in one
year, I think that the first 1TB SSD are going to be introduced next
month), I am puzzled by ultrabooks because of the reduced resolution: I
like to see lots of things on the screen.

But now, with 2560x1600, there can be plenty of things on the smaller
screen.
Sure, having fonts small as Retina allows is not a good idea because
getting older I get more easily fatigued with my eyes, but let's say that
probably I can fit the same things I have at 1440x900 on the 15" without
much fatigue?

What do you think? If any of you is going to buy it, it would be nice to
let us know how one can work with it.


--
Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect @ Tidalwave s.a.s.
"We make Java work. Everywhere."
http://tidalwave.it/fabrizio/blog - fabrizio...@tidalwave.it

[phil swenson]

you going to use it with OS X or Linux?

OS X it will have a desktop layout like 1280x800, but with super sharp
text (you can reduce your IDE font to be very small and it will still
be legible)

If you are running linux, is will present as 2560x1600.

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[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:11:05 +0200, phil swenson <phil.s...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> you going to use it with OS X or Linux?
>
> OS X it will have a desktop layout like 1280x800, but with super sharp
> text (you can reduce your IDE font to be very small and it will still
> be legible)

It's what I was thinking of.

>
> If you are running linux, is will present as 2560x1600.

Mostly OS X, with other o.s. mostly by virtualization, and seldom by
native boot.

[phil swenson]

I have a MBP 15" Retina. So effective 1440x900 desktop (but 2880x1800
in reality). I took intellij's font size down a bit and love it.
Perfectly clear, incredibly readable text. Hooking my mac up to my
27" external display (2550x1450) now makes everything look kind of
lousy in comparison.

[ranjith]

That sounds sweet. But it definitely is an expensive rig

Does Java apps ( IntelliJ, Netbeans) font render fine on retina?

I had tried eclipse at apple store and it looked pretty crappy. 

Then there was some hi DPI config entry that one had to make it look perfect.

I am planning to get macbook air:

1) portable

2) core i7 + 8GB memory option 

3) appropriate screen resolution for coding.

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Wed, 07 Nov 2012 17:40:04 +0100, ranjith <sen...@gmail.com> wrote:

> That sounds sweet. But it definitely is an expensive rig
> Does Java apps ( IntelliJ, Netbeans) font render fine on retina?

No, as far as I can tell, even though I'm not sure. This is indeed a
showstopper for our idea.

> I had tried eclipse at apple store and it looked pretty crappy.
> Then there was some hi DPI config entry that one had to make it look
> perfect.

I've read something similar for NetBeans, but not being able to test
myself I can't say.

[Cédric Beust ♔]

For what it's worth, I'm using Eclipse on a Mac Book Pro Retina display and it's crystal clear (and frighteningly small if you go for the highest setting).

-- 

Cédric

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[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Wed, 07 Nov 2012 19:40:49 +0100, Cédric Beust ♔ <ced...@beust.com>
wrote:

> For what it's worth, I'm using Eclipse on a Mac Book Pro Retina display
> and
> it's crystal clear (and frighteningly small if you go for the highest
> setting).

For NetBeans this seems to be the most recent status (from the issue
tracker):

2012-11-01 09:08:23 UTC
Just to sum up as more reports are coming:

The problem is fixed in NetBeans 7.2.1 and 7.3 dev when running with JDK 6.

The problem still exists when running any version of NetBeans on JDK 7. The
following bug is tracking progress on fixing this problem with JDK 7:
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=8000629

[phil swenson]

IntelliJ was updated for Retina months ago. Looks great.  I take the font size down a fair bit as having super sharp text lets you go smaller than you would normally be comfortable with.

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