Visual Studio / .NET development on netbook or 12" laptop

Some_randomer

Hi I'm a .NET developer and I have a 17" beast of a laptop that I develop on. The thing weighs a ton and I'm sick of lugging it around so I want to get something lighter and smaller. Also the battery is shot so it needs to be plugged in to function which is another pain, so ideally I'd like to get something with a long battery life.

I've never worked on a screen less than 17" so I'm wondering if anyone has opinions on what would be the minimum size necessary to be able to comfortably develop asp.net and mvc web apps? I typically do front and back end development so will be doing basic front end such as ajax but I'm not a designer so not too worried about re-sizing forms based on screen res, or different colours/pantones etc, more so the functionality.


TIA

johnsmith13

I currently program on 15" with out any problem! For coding it is perfectly acceptable! I have written code on a 12" but I didnt like it. I would say 15" is the best

Malice

I use a 27 inch monitor at home and a 24 inch monitor at work and I couldn't handle the smaller screen space but if you're determined to go down that route, make sure you do things like autohide Solution Explorer, Server Explorer and the Toolbox windows to maximise the amount of space visible for your code. You may also want to reduce the font size used so that you can squeeze more lines into the visible space.

Razzuh

I'd say developing on a netbook would be painful. Not just because of the screen size but because they're just slow. They're really only equipped for web browsing and barely even that these days with their 1GB ram. Do you host locally? I'm feeling frustrated even thinking about the slowness!

I've always used a 17" and I don't think I could do with anything less. I only got a new one recently. I did consider a 15" for portablility, but in the end went for another 17. I'd give a 15" a try if I was you, I wouldn't consider anything smaller.

Anima

Don't even bother with anything smaller than 15" (lol). You'll just completely ruin your productivity and also less CPU is longer build times which is more time wasted. Less RAM means things like intellisense will take longer to work also.

I'd stick it out with the 17" and just get a new battery.

Some_randomer

Anima wrote: »

I'd stick it out with the 17" and just get a new battery.

Ya you could be right..I looked at batteries on ebay and very few are compatible with my particular model which is a Sony Vaio VGN-AR71S. A couple that I did find were either 2nd hand / refurbs or else they were foreign companies probably from China so I don't trust them could end up with a dud.

srsly78

Screensize is one issue as people have said (2560x1600 or gtfo).


Other issue is CPU, netbooks often have an Atom cpu, which is great for battery but miserable for performance. Compiling on this is a painful experience! Get a laptop with a better cpu and you should be ok (i5MU is low power and more performant than an atom).

Final issue is RAM, running loads of dev tools uses up a lot! So make sure you have 4GB at least, which isn't a big deal for modern laptops.

Oh, and regarding battery: Anything with good battery life will have a low power cpu, and they often clock themselves down to save even more. So, looking for performance at the same time as battery is a fools errand. Even with a "low power" laptop you will want it plugged in so it performs at 100%. Depends on what you are developing ofc, some stuff is more heavyweight than others.

but43r

I do all my development on 15" laptop and I find it a bit small at times. It's manageable but not perfect. As others said, try to get another battery. Definitely don't go lower that 15", it will just frustrate you...

John_Mc

Wouldn't be able to do that myself! I use 2 monitors at home and it's great, but only a fairly well spec'd laptop @ 1280px * 1024px. It's just about doable and I wouldnt go any lower.

As already said, performance will be another issue to be concerned about.

johnmcavinue.ie

stevenmu

Will the laptop screen be your only screen, or will you usually be connected to another monitor? I had a 14" laptop before, and it was fine for quick bits and pieces, but I couldn't have done any real serious work on it for any length of time. Most of the time I was plugged into a 22" screen.

I did use VS on a 10" netbook a few times. After an upgrade to 2GB of RAM it runs ok for simple, light projects. You spend 90% of your time scrolling up and down and left to right though. Not much fun.

There's a strong body of opinion that developer productivity is tighly linked to available screen space, with many claims that using a dual monitor setup can nearly double productivity.

My current setup is a 15" laptop, it's great when paired with a 22" standalone screen, and pretty good for making changes on the move, and just about enough for doing longer stretches of work if I'm stuck with it on it's own. I wouldn't go much smaller unless I really needed lots of portability.

Some_randomer

stevenmu wrote: »

Will the laptop screen be your only screen, or will you usually be connected to another monitor?

The laptop will be my only screen. It's not for actual work mostly my own learning and research, playing around with VS 2010 and MVC3 etc. I'll be starting a new role soon and I expect a lot of reading up and playing around with sample code in the evenings which will be on the laptop. During the day I'll be using the company desktop and a decent size monitor.

Think it's best to stick with the 17" for now. I just ordered a new battery off eBay which should make life a bit easier...here's hoping it's not a dud :-o

unknownlegend

Some_randomer wrote: »

Think it's best to stick with the 17" for now. I just ordered a new battery off eBay which should make life a bit easier...here's hoping it's not a dud :-o

Think you made the right choice. I couldn't cope with anything less than 17' and somewhere in the region of 2k*1.6k resolution. In work I have two 24' and find a pretty big drop off in productivity when forced to use one screen (e.g. (a few) visual studio, sql server mgmt studio, some jetBrains stuff, UML process maps... all open at the same time versus alt-tabbing).

Of course, development is possible on the smaller screens (e.g. have written, compiled and run android code on my HTC for the lark :cool:), but in my opinion, not comfortably.