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It's been 7 years since I bought my last new machine (Dell 1720 laptop, 1920x1200 LCD, 160G 7200rpm drive, 4G RAM), which works well for developing WinForms apps but doesn't cut it for Xamarin mobile development. So I bought myself Brix Pro[^]  last night.
- i7 4th gen quad-core @ 3.9GHz
- Intel Iris Pro 5200 graphics
- 16GB 1600MHz RAM
- 500 GB Samsung EVO (6GB/sec read, 5GB/sec write) SSD
- USB3 x 4, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, RJ45, Bluetooth, display port, HDMI, headphone + S/PDIF
- Size = 4.5" x 4.5" x 2.5"
Going to have fun setting it up and moving my development to it!
/ravi
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No, you're gonna have fun once you have it set up and all the software installed and configured.
And the ship-it-with-these-viruses (Symantec, McAffee, Win8) removed.
In the meantime it's going to be progress-bar hell....
And yes, I'm jealous!
You looking for sympathy?
You'll find it in the dictionary, between sympathomimetic and sympatric
(Page 1788, if it helps)
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OriginalGriff wrote: And the ship-it-with-these-viruses (Symantec, McAffee, Win8) removed.
No, because it doesn't come with a hard disk or OS. 
OriginalGriff wrote: In the meantime it's going to be progress-bar hell....
Shameful admission: I love setting up a brand new dev box from scratch!
/ravi
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How? It takes forever - even a couple of weeks later I'm generally going "where's the installer for that doohickey?" when I try to use something I forgot... 
You looking for sympathy?
You'll find it in the dictionary, between sympathomimetic and sympatric
(Page 1788, if it helps)
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I archive all my installers and license numbers on an external disk (doubly backed up!), so finding my OSs and apps is pretty easy. I tend to keep my PCs lean and mean. All my source code (except for throwaway samples) is stored in TFS @ Microsoft, so recreating my dev workspace is pretty easy.
/ravi
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The problem with packratting installers is that, unless you're equally CDO about checking each vendor monthly for new versions, you end up installing a mess of old versions.
The part of new box config I loathe the most is that installing VS in any order than oldest to newest never works out right. If I could just install the current versions of VS, SVN, and Re#er I could probably be ready to start work on a new box in an hour or two. Instead, the last time I did it building the VS03, 08, 2010, 2012 stack took a full day; and the only one of those I could safely jettison today is 08. I'm working on a new version of the last major 03 app I have left; but would need to test one more small one to make sure it builds before I could boot it. Even then I'm not sure I'd want to; for regression investigation having the 03 version debuggable would be useful and it includes a grid library that doesn't place nicely with .net 2.0 or later. 
Then there's normal java, android java, and (unless we either give it up, or win and someone else gets stuck with it) blackberry10 java so I can reinstall the demo app every 60 days when it ages off the dingleberry it's installed on. Two ruby apps, one running with a locally installed copy the second in a VM; both using git instead of svn.
And that's not even mentioning the mess of other tools, etc that I've accumulated over the years. 
It took a full week of clicking next between doing real work on the old system before I was ready to switch to my new laptop the last time.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Good point.
I think my situation is a bit different. I've been using VS2010 so far for personal dev, and will be adding VS2013 to my arsenal. Other than that, I only have single (and in most cases, latest) versions of other tools (MS Office, PShop, install builder, obfuscater, and a few free utilities that I can't live without), so migration to a new machine isn't too painful.
/ravi
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My solution for that is to have one VM for VS 2008, one more for 2010, 2013, etc. I still have the installers for each one of them (as ISOs), but primarily I rely on copies of each compiler installed in otherwise completely clean VMs. The clean VMs is what I'm mostly interested in backing up on a regular basis.
Whenever I feel like it, I boot up those clean VMs, download all the latest updates, then update my set of archived VHD images.
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I've thought about a VM for legacy stuff at work, although it'd probably be a single VM for all old VS versions so I could keep it locally without overflowing my relatively small HD. I've never been happy enough with VM dev tool performance in the past under MS-VPC (picking my own hypervisor and getting the VM on the domain are mutually exclusive) or it not playing well with multiple monitors to want to do any primary dev in it though; so I'd still probably end up with at least 2 versions of VS and all the java crud installed locally.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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If all you have to compare with is VirtualPC, you really ought to give it another shot--the state of virtualization has changed a lot since VPC was a contender. I'd been using HyperV with Server 2008 R2 for about 2 years (recently moved on to 2012 R2), and while it's probably not as fast as running an OS natively, my VMs perform well enough that it's generally not a worry.
The key is having enough RAM. As soon as memory usage gets above roughly 85-90% of your physical RAM, performance will drop through the floor. I started off with 8GB, then quickly moved on to 16, then 32, but that's just me--as I throw more RAM in my system, I find myself wanting to simply leave more VMs running all the time. Lucky for me, I was doing this when RAM was going for about half of current prices. If that was still the case (and I had a motherboard that could handle it), I'd move on to 64GB. My CPU is an i7 2600K (from the Sandybridge generation). The CPU's never been a bottleneck no matter how many VMs I throw at it. RAM and disk I/O will get there first.
Practically everything I do nowadays is off of VMs, and I'm not looking back. I have nothing running on the host OS (except for the necessary motherboard drivers), so if the worse happens and hardware dies (and it's happened to me), reinstalling the OS is a 20-minute job, and that's from scratch--since I have no additional app to reinstall, I don't bother backing up the host OS. The VMs are running off of a different physical hard disk (right now in fact a RAID setup). Backing those up is a matter of invoking robocopy from a batch file, though it could be automated. In the worse case, all I need is one VHD file to bring back a VM - creating a new VM and pointing it to an existing .VHD file takes 30 seconds, if that, to walk through the wizard.
As for your last point--a multiple monitor setup--my VM host is sitting in the basement and is just using the onboard video (it might as well be headless, considering how rarely I have to be in front of it). I access it from my desk in my home office upstairs with a first-gen Surface Pro that's got 3 1920x1200 monitors hooked up through a USB3 dock. I can RDP into any VM either in a small window, full-screen on one monitor, or using all three monitors (plus the tablet's own display).
Since everything's running remotely, it's nice to be able to access my full environment outdoors, or at the office through VPN, with little more than a cheap laptop that doesn't have anything of value on it.
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*nod*
Working for a contractor is a pain for stuff like this; multiple customers really makes the many platform problem explode.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Awesome, Sata III as well?
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Yes, both mSATA and SATA-3.
/ravi
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote: Size = 4.5" x 4.5" x 2.5"
Oooh, that's the coolest thing about it. I built an 8 core system a year ago that sits in a huge metal box, something like 16" x 16" x 10" Yargh. And, unfortunately, it's noisy as sin too with the fans.
But geez, it is screaming fast. I absolutely love SSD's. Windows boots in a couple seconds, everything opens instantly. I'm sure you will love the experience of the SSD and 16GB of RAM with a fast quad core processor. Enjoy!
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: But geez, it is screaming fast. I absolutely love SSD's.
amen to that
I love them too.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Congrats on the new box!...overdue for one, myself...we'll see what the $$$ situation looks like this fall.
Enjoy your 7-14 days of installing & tweaking
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Congrats on the new beast! My current main rig was built in Oct. 2009 and I have a laptop just a half-year older. Up to now, my replacement rate was around 3-4 years so I should be overdue...except that it's all running so smooth. (probably just hexed myself!) I was intrigued by a post here last week where a member claimed to be quite happy with a Surface Pro...while running three monitors! I'd like to replace both with either a super nice laptop or tablet...not now, but when the next gen comes out and the prices drop some more. What I have is fine for now.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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Awesome box, congrats!
Have you ever just looked at someone and knew the wheel was turning but the hamster was dead?
Trying to understand the behavior of some people is like trying to smell the color 9.
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Mine includes expert-level knowledge of IPoAC.
Sadly no one has asked about it yet 
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Sounds like you're hoping to send them on a wild-goose chase...
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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I'd just like a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
Me, all the time
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Mine used to say I was a founder member of the school's Kabadi club.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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I don't,
my full CV is like 4 pages. But I don't usually use it when it comes to send it somewhere.
Why?
My experience is in three big and very different areas: Automation, Robotics and High-Level programming
If I send it as it is, most of the companies would get scared or think I am over-qualified.
Conclusion: I adapt it and take all easter eggs away, if they are not relevant for the future reader.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Mine is 13 pages. As ridiculous as that sounds, I get a very high interview rate and usually before I show up they know if they want me or not. I did it that way because I have been a hiring manager for many positions and you have so little to go on from a 1 page resume and cover letter. With mine, what they see is what they get. I use a skills grid to indicate my level of knowledge for various technologies using this key:
Basic knowledge: I have researched this topic; or I haven’t used this technology, but I’d like an opportunity to; or I have used this for less than 6 months; or I could discuss it at a cocktail party.
Applied knowledge: I have used this in one or more projects; or I have used this for less than 2 years.
Advanced knowledge: I use this regularly in projects; or I have been using this for 2–5 years; or with some preparation, I would feel comfortable speaking about this topic to a general audience.
Expert knowledge: This is a core technology in my projects; or I have been using this for 5+ years; or I have written or spoken to this topic; or with some preparation, I would feel comfortable speaking about this to an audience of my peers.
For example, I have expert knowledge of C# and basic knowledge of Objective-C.
People appreciate the no-BS approach.
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Yvan Rodrigues wrote: I use a skills grid to indicate my level of knowledge for various technologies
using this key:
I do it as well.
But what I mean is:
If due to laboral experience, you are having more pages, then it is ok. Example: 2 years as hardware developer, then 3 years as IT-Manager, 5 years more as automation programmer... and you are now sending your resume to a technical lead manager in a company making engines... well that's where you worked to, so you should not hidden anything.
But, in germany, not "desired / matching" information can be as bad as no information at all. I mean, if the offer is for a robot programmer, saying that you are good with python or SQL has nothing to do with the job and can play against you.
Anther thing is that you get asked about your skills in the interview. Then I would explain about the "extra" knowledge as well. Should they ask "why didn't you put it in your CV?" My answer would be "I just wanted to focus in the most important skills for this job"
At least that was my experience when I was looking for a new job 6 years ago. But, as everything in this life, it might have evolved and be not accurated anymore.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Good Lord.
A 13 page resume is the opposite of a "no-BS approach"
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