shalan - Developer IT

Laptop choice for development: MacBook Pro 17 vs Dell Studio XPS 16 vs HP Envy 15

- by Shalan

Hey! First things first - let me state that I am not intending to play games on this - I have narrowed down to these 3 purely based on specs and its individual brand reliability in the market. I intend to primarily use: Visual Studio 2008 Pro a lot (develop and deploy on Windows platforms) SQL Server 2005 Oracle 10g Adobe Photoshop CS4 Microsoft Expression Studio Google Sketchup I currently use a desktop PC (Core2Duo 2.66Ghz with 3GB DDRII memory) running Vista Business 32-bit - and I have to admit that, especially for Visual Studio, its quite sluggish to a point where it affects productivity. Furthermore, I intend to only use the notebook on a table - with a cooled surface, like granite :) - so I would appreciate people's input with regard to heat issues. Im aware that the Dell's primary exhaust gets blocked by the lid when open, but some reviews don't seem to place extraordinary emphasis on heat issues resulting from this. My options for the Dell/Alienware: Core i7 720QM 4GB DDRIII memory ATI mobility 3670 (512) 128GB Solid State Drive 16-inch Full HD RGB-LED LCD display (1080p) 3-year next-business-day support My configuration for the Apple MBP: Core2Duo 2.8Ghz (Im assuming the T9600) 4GB DDRIII memory 128GB Solid State Drive standard 1 year support The one advantage I think of with the MBP is that I can have the addition of OSX (though Im unsure what I would use it for, but purely to play around with a much-boasted-about OS) What are your thoughts on this, especially regarding build-quality, heat, performance and battery-life? Much thanks! ~shalan

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Core i7-620M vs Core i5-540M

- by Shalan

Hi, I'm recommending a laptop to a colleague, and the specific laptop he has chosen has the above CPU chips as options. Both chips have 2-cores/4-threads. The i7-620M is a 2.66 GHz (4MB Cache) while the i5-540M is a 2.53 GHz (3MB Cache)....both Arrandale architecture. He is a .NET programmer working with SQL Server and Oracle, and occasionally uses Adobe Fireworks for web-related design elements. He also loves playing around in Adobe Premiere Pro, and does a lot of media/video work. Would you notice any significant performance difference between the 2? The laptop manufacturer claims that the battery life on both is the same irrespective of the chip used (although I find that hard to believe), but there is a major cost difference between them, with the Core i7-620M being the more expensive. According to http://ark.intel.com, the one thing that seems different (besides the obvious speeds/frequencies/etc) is a feature called "Embedded" - what is this exactly? You can see the quick comparison here - http://ark.intel.com/Compare.aspx?ids=43544,43560 I would sincerely appreciate any advice me on this. THANKS!

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"Input not Supported" on external monitor

- by Shalan

when it rains, it pours! Im helping a friend with his Dell Inspiron 1520. The hdd crashed and and top of that, the screen is cracked. I've replaced the hdd (SATA-5400), but the lcd replacement is only comin in a months time. I've tried to: hook the laptop up to an Acer 18.5" lcd monitor via VGA, boot up into Windows 7 installer, get to the Step-1 screen, Switch to external display (Function-F8) ...and get the "Input not supported" message on the Acer lcd. I know that this is a resolution problem, but cant for the life of me figure out how to solve this. I've also tried, hooking it up to my TV via Composite cables (got a VGA-Composite adaptor). Please could someone advise me what to do? -Thank u!

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Consolidating Windows and Linux servers

- by Shalan

Hi, I'm looking forward to getting your thoughts on consolidating/virtualizing 3 Windows 2008 Servers and 2 Linux Debian Servers into 1 (powerful) machine. What is the most cost-effective Virtualization software available to accomplish this. VMWare looks awfully expensive!

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"Input not Supported" on external monitor

- by Shalan

when it rains, it pours! Im helping a friend with his Dell Inspiron 1520. The hdd crashed and and top of that, the screen is cracked. I've replaced the hdd (SATA-5400), but the lcd replacement is only comin in a months time. I've tried to: hook the laptop up to an Acer 18.5" lcd monitor via VGA, boot up into Windows 7 installer, get to the Step-1 screen, Switch to external display (Function-F8) ...and get the "Input not supported" message on the Acer lcd. I know that this is a resolution problem, but cant for the life of me figure out how to solve this. I've also tried, hooking it up to my TV via Composite cables (got a VGA-Composite adaptor). Please could someone advise me what to do? -Thank u!

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CMS common Architecture

- by Shalan

Hi there, I know this is a weird question to ask, but I would like to know if there is any documentation/blog-article out there that explains the architecture of a Website content management system? More particularly, I am interested to learn more about how "widgets" are implemented. I can't remember which system it was that I've seen tis one, but in the "Page Layout view" it had the ability to allow the end user to select a widget (thumbnail gallery, contact form, etc) from a list, and drag and drop it onto custom areas of the page. I know that this is not directly a programming question, but please could I seek advice/feedback on this. Thanks!

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ADO.NET Data Services for MySQL

- by Shalan

Hey! I've searched high and low for this, and no luck. Is there a way that CRUD methods for a MySQL install (Linux box) be exposed via ADO.NET WCF Data Services? I would really love to leverage this in my WPF app :) Thank u!

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