I upgraded to a quad-core Q6600 based system with two Raptor 10K rpm drives and 4GB RAM this last week. The problem with being my main Windows development machine is that there so many packages to install and configuration to re-setup that it takes a day plus some residue to finish the changeover. The decision was made to stay with Windows XP with this upgrade as I just don’t want to spend the time chasing down compatibility issues with Windows Vista and the myriad number of software packages that I depend upon on different software projects.
Apart from taking a day to do the full changeover, things went pretty smoothly. Having the “old” AMD X2 based system there and available to confirm the package list and configuration settings helped a lot though. I also took the opportunity to get another 22 inch monitor and move to a dual monitor development set up. It’s not quite symmetrical but the cost differential for going to another 24 inch monitor wasn’t justifiable at the current point in time. My long term goal is to have 3 24 inch or 30 inch monitors.
The quad core and 10k rpm combination has definitely made a difference to my workflow. The system is a lot more responsive when lots of tasks are happening at the same time e.g. developing in visual studio with Resharper, running automated tests, running virtual machines needed for the tests, going back and forth to Outlook etc. I actually thought that compile times hadn’t actually changed much but flipping back to the old dev machine showed me that there was a clear improvement. Its amazing how quickly you get used to improvements and forget what it was like before the change.
Take a squiz at a couple of photos of my work environment. I like to keep things pretty sparse, but this would be the cleanest it will get normally. The desk is an electric desk that can be repositioned at different times of the day so my back varies its position regularly. The first photo is in the seated position, whilst the next is in the standing position. The electric desk was from Ergomotion and while expensive has been worth it for me.
