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I differentiate my upgrades between Major upgrades and Minor upgrades. I only do a major upgrade of my systems every couple of years...i.e. new CPU, Ram, Motherboard. I will do periodic upgrades, such as better/faster hard drives, faster ram, faster video cards, etc. whenever I need to. Usually, thats a couple times a year. I just recently upgraded to a Core i7 920 system that is going to be overclocked and watercooled...I am hoping I can go a full year without upgrading this time. The only thing I will consider is a second video card to SLI with my current one in the event that I need even more pixel pumping power than my GTX 280 has now (I can only hope I don't).
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I get a new one whenever i start at a new place.I have yet to undergo an upgrade as such. Lucky me ?
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That is where it comes in handy that besides being a developer and network admin, I also build all machines for my department. So I rarely have a machine that is older than 1.5 years. However after 12.75 years this trend is changing because I generally do not have the time to reinstall all my applications this frequently and my 2.9GHz dual core with 4GB of memory and a 750GB hard disk (a $600 US machine at the time of purchase) I bought early last year is fast enough for most things. It does lag however when I compile paraview which is 2.6 million lines of code in one visual studio solution. I guess if I get told we have $1000 to spend before the end of the fiscal year... I could put $650 in to getting a i7 system with 6GB of memory and a 1.5TB drive and pass my system on to someone who needs an upgrade or use it as an additional linux raid6 server. Since the mobo has 8 sata ports these work well in linux software raid and with a little tweaking of the raid stripe cache they net over 200MB/s writes and over 300MB/s reads when paired with 6 or more seagate 7200.11 drives. I would spend the rest on monitor(s) and or LTO2 tapes..
John
modified on Friday, March 13, 2009 11:39 AM
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I hate upgrading 
Todd Smith
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This is much easier on linux. I mean on linux most times I just clone the hard drive and get on with my life. On windows I I have created slipstream dvds that come preloaded with some of the essential software to make me waste less time installing each package individually.
John
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If I think its going too fast I upgrade my Windows and that messes it up for 6 months 
Its not a development machine unless its in constant state of BETA.
I'm hoping to install windows 3.1 and watch it fly
Roll on 7!
Windows 7 deadly sins:
Gluttony (Vista), Sloth (Search), Lust(Leopard), Wrath(UAC), Greed (Silverlight), Pride (Deep Zoom Mobile....er runnning on IPhone only)
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Odd...Windows 7 has never blue-screened for me in over 3 months of use. UAC is practically a non-issue in Win7 (and assuming Microsoft fixes the potential security holes before release), it is a MASSIVE improvement over Windows Vista's UAC. Search is lightning fast in Windows 7, usually bringing up exactly what I was looking for in the first few results...
Windows 7 is what Vista should have been...just don't upgrade, install it fresh!
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install it fresh! argh
then VStudio/ win sDKs
Java SDk
Java OS
ADOBE....god dont get me started on adobe
3 years later....oh windows 8 is out
I wonder will 7 or 8 ever match Longhorn concept
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9ifQvQCO7Y
half way through the video
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The only thing that is really missing from Vista/Win7 that made Longhorn a thing is WinFS. WinFS is the most amazing file system ever, and offered so much to Longhorn. If/when they add that back, the full longhorn vision will be realized. We already have XAML and WPF, which is the core platform upon which all those amazingly fancy, animated applications were built. Microsofts Next Media Group is the research group that developed most of those cool media management applications, and they are still working on those products...but the real thing of it is...apps arn't an operating system. Windows 7 is massively slimmed down, and doesn't include most of those common little apps we've come to expect. They are now all part of the Windows Live software package, and thats actually a good thing. Part of the reason we havn't seen these fancy apps yet is because the Windows development cycle is so long, and the bulk of the focus is on the OS, not the apps. I think this decoupling of the OS from the bulk of the standard Windows apps will be a good thing, allowing Microsoft to have much shorter cycles and quicker releases for them independantly of windows, hopefully bringing that fantastic visual fiesta that was Longhorn to the masses.
As for reinstalling...I got the following reinstalled within a few hours of upgrading (keep in mind...systems get faster along with windows, so install time shrinks too...the Core i7 is so much faster than its predecessor, install time is almost nothing for most apps):
Windows Live Apps
Visual Studio 2005
Visual Studio 2008
SQL Server 2008
Visual Studio 2008 SP1
.NET 3.5 SP1
ReSharper 4.1
Enterprise Architect 7
Adobe Creative Suite Design Pro
Microsoft Office 2007
3D Studio Max
Maya
World of Warcraft
Crysis
Crysis: Warhead
Far Cry 2
Fallout 3
Oblivion & Shivering Isles
My entire install process took less than 6 hours for both Windows 7 (which installed faster than any windows version I've ever encountered), and all the software above.
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My works PC is about 9 years old and wasn't high spec when new. My home PC is even older.
Developers should have the lowest spec PCs that their target audience have so that if their work runs fine one their PC, it should run blisteringly fast on the best PCs in the environment (normally, senior managers have them!). There is nothing worse than having something that runs reasonably well on a developer's top end PC that runs like a snail on a normal user's PC. How many people (other than me) still test their web apps on a 28.8 Kbps modem and ensure that their desktop apps run on Windows2000 with MS-IE6? You should - because your users might still use them.
Admittedly, it can cause problems when a user says that your application doesn't work with the latest OS / Office suite / email / browser and you have no way of testing it as your PC is incapable of running them.
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Testing on low performance systems is important but developing on them?!
I want my "make"'s to take seconds not minutes.
I want my "make all"'s to take ten of minutes minutes not tens of hours.
I want my fully instrumented debug executables to be responsive.
I want my valgrind test runs to finish in hours not days.
I want to be able to aggressively multitask if need be.
Developing on low performance hardware is wasting time.
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I totally agree on that one. My development machine should be fast, otherwise my job is going get frustrating.
Also I am wasting time waiting for my machine to finish things.
I do think however that the general thought here is good. You should make sure it runs smoothly on the machines of your target audience.
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WillemM wrote: I do think however that the general thought here is good. You should make sure it runs smoothly on the machines of your target audience.
True, but that does not imply or require that development should be made on low(er) performance machines.
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That works for one test machine in a suite of them, but not for a development machine. For example, if you're doing multithreaded applications, the only valid test is on a multiple core / multiple CPU box.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I disagree completely. Testers should have the lowest common denominator. Developer machines should be as fast as possible.
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Throwing my hat in. Agreed. Development machines should be close to, if not top-end with low-end hardware at the testing end.
-CB
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The test environment should be or include a "reasonable low end". If you are cheap you can use VM's and strsss test tools, but that's not quite the same.
The developing machine, however, should be the best workhorse you can afford - developers are more expensive than a Velociraptor, and that's peanunt dust compared to forgetting an extra check while waiting for SQL Server to run a CREATE query while the debugger is slowing down everything with data breakpoints and boundschecker trashing the disk by intrumentig a good gigabyte of binaries and debug info.
Even the most boring desktop app now is built using an editor, compiler, debugger, refactoring tool, source control client and bug tracker, Office to read these darned specs, often you also have a profiler some test framework, instant messenger or skype, a lot of crap bogging things down.
In addition to the program you run.
Even more so with todays tools. We rarely develop one program in one language. For todays apps, you often end up with a good handful of technologies, every has its own set of tools. You'll have a CSS debugger and an XSL debugger and an C# debugger and an editor for XSL and one for C# etc.
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Sure, if you want to have a heart attack!!!
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This is obviously not going to work... look at the requirements[^] for Visual Studio:
* Minimum: 1.6 GHz CPU, 384 MB RAM, 1024x768 display, 5400 RPM hard disk
* Recommended: 2.2 GHz or higher CPU, 1024 MB or more RAM, 1280x1024 display, 7200 RPM or higher hard disk
* On Windows Vista: 2.4 GHz CPU, 768 MB RAM
(and if you actually use the minimum requirement machine, your product will probably be out-of-date before you finish developing it...)
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Indivara wrote: look at the requirements[^] for Visual Studio
Which is exactly why I use VS only for debugging. It is unfortunate that Windbg is such a PITA to use or I would never even start VS.
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I totally disagree,
it's a big waste of money waiting for compiler/debugger etc. pp.
If you develop a mass product, the intention might be true a little bit, because lower specs for the target machine might give a few customers more, but in any other case, buying a new machine is often the cheapest method to 'fix' performance issues.
This should not be an excuse for writing ugly and low performance code, either.
Improving performance should be done with help of adequate tools like TrueTime etc., not by working on a C64....
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Surely a better solution would be to have two machines no? One to develop on, and one to test on?
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I have change workplace, hence pc more often than I (or my employer) have acctually upgraded.
Java
C#
Gupta Team Developer 3.1
VC++ 2003
Oracle 8i79i
W2K-XP
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I recently bought a new laptop. I consider it the ultimate upgrade: I bought a MacBook Pro!
Paul
A .NET developer who now drinks the Ruby and Cocoa Koolaid.
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