laptop for VC++ plugin development - enough power?

[citizenchunk]

hi all. first off, sorry about posting this hardware-related post in this forum. i just thought that the riff-raff in the hardware forum wouldn't be able to answer questions related to VC++.

i'm looking to ditch my PC desktop for a laptop in order to live the dream ... yes, that's right: programming on the couch and toilet. i don't need it for anything but running VC++ and various audio apps, FOR TESTING ONLY. i don't need to run 32 tracks just to run 1 plugin instance. maybe Wavelab, or something light. (if i need more power, i'll go to work or something.)

so i've been looking at Dell's refurb outlet. they have some refurbed Inspiron 1100's that look decent. for ~650-700, you can get a laptop with a Celeron 2.4 GHz cpu, 256 MB RAM, and a 20GB HDD. wireless can be added cheaply.

my question is whether or not a Celeron 2.4 GHZ cpu will be enough for VC++, in particular when it comes to compiling. right now, my desktop is only an AthlonXP 1800 (~1.53 GHz), and it is more than enough power, even for testing in audio apps. i know that Celeron's are kinda lame, but i figure that the 2.4 GHz clock speed kind of makes up for its FPU performance. agree? disagree? i've never owned a Celeron, so i don't know.

also, do the Celeron's have the same instruction set as the P4? i haven't gotten into platform optimization yet, but it would be nice to know if my plugin will have huge denormal problems.

can anyone think of anything that i am overlooking? also, is there anyone in the NYC area that would like to purchase a slightly used desktop system?

[Improv]

my question is whether or not a Celeron 2.4 GHZ cpu will be enough for VC++, in particular when it comes to compiling. right now, my desktop is only an AthlonXP 1800 (~1.53 GHz), and it is more than enough power,

Looking at the System Requirements on the VC++.net box, MS says that a PIII 600 Mhz with 96 mb ram (running XP Home)is recommended. Even if you double those requirements (1.2 GHz and 192mb ram) you should be ok. Even more so since you are only testing vst's, not using it as a full time Cubase\Logic DAW.

I think Celerons are slightly crippled Pentiums which
have slower math co-processors? (Something like that)
So a 2.4 Celeron should easily be as fast as a 1.6 Pentium. BTW-any reason for going Celeron? What about AMD's?

[liqih]

for the dream I use an IBM R31, P III-M 1.100

it works beautifully, solid, compiles fast too,

any Centrino notebook is suggested

[peteblues]

I got a centrino notebook (1.6GHz) and use visual studio .net on it. Works like a charme, with Cubase, 3 instances of visual studio.net, winamp radio stream, and photoshop (god, I love multitasking, never mind the couch and tv)

Peter

[citizenchunk]

thanks for the feedback guys. you've given me confidence to go ahead with the cheapy laptop.

[ddummer]

I use a DELL inspiron 1100 with a 2.2Ghz Celeron with 768mb RAM.

And I run MS Visual Studio 5.0 + Photoshop 6.0
+ Cubase SL2.0 at the same time without any problems.

Sure the CPU fan goes crazy when you are really busy.
But for 970 euro (new) this computer has been a really good work horse where I do almost all my stuff on it these days.

Remember! Lots of RAM! It came with 256mb RAM and
THAT is equal to useless since the system would
use the swapfile no matter what you do.

//Daniel

[ddummer]

..And yeah.. don´t expect too much from the built in audio card.. It works but the quality at the tail(close to zero) will do this nice 8bit-ish ssssswwwwwoooopp sound.

I use a U24 USB audio card to get good quality.
Works great but if you get down to 4ms latency
then you can´t run Cubase SL2.0 with too much of
success. Chainer with a CPU load up to 50% is ok.

9ms is ok for running soft synths.
in a relaxed state around 20ms everything is as normal.

//Daniel

[Miles1981]

The built-in audio card are crap, but my laptop is enough for VS.NET... I have a Celeron 800 which is a Pentium3 with less L1 cache, ...

It compiles at will, no problem...

[Borogove]

I did almost all Tiny God development on a Dell Inspiron 4000, P3-800, 384MB of RAM. It encouraged me to write my code in a relatively efficient manner , but I certainly didn't mind the compile times. You could do it on a 400Mhz machine if you were patient...

[Borogove]

dang double posts