Previously, I was debating myself on whether or not I should get a laptop or a desktop to run virtuals on.. Well things have changed a bit. On March 3rd, Apple upgraded the iMacs. They go to 8Gb now. Further, HP makes a 17" laptop that supports 8Gb and is around $760 (after rebates) maybe even cheaper elsewhere. Slam dunk, you'd think right? Replace my 2006 iMac with a new iMac beefed up to 8Gb and all my problems are solved and I didn't take up any more space on my crowded desk. Ahh, but life's never that simple. Go to the apple store and try to buy a 20" iMac (or any size, doesn't matter) and customize it to 8Gb. Go ahead. I'll wait.
Did you see what happened to the price? YIIIIKES! That 1199 iMac just jumps to 2199. OUCH! I could buy a drawer full of Asus laptops for that and just set them on the floor when I need them. Same price jump is true for the HP laptops. It's between $400 and $600 per 4Gb SO-DIMM to upgrade these things. So I could go the 20" iMac route (or treat myself to a 24" iMac) and then go 3rd party at a later date and not pick up yet another device burning electricity in my house. I like that aspect. Keeps the same footprint but gets over my memory limitation.
Well I have the desktop I'm going to buy picked out. A Dell XPS 435MT. Costco and Microcenter both have them for $999.99 (until march 31st). Other places (dell.com perhaps) probably have them too at that price. It's an intel i7, which is quad-core with hyperthreading, which is kinda like having 8 cores. It comes with a 750Gb drive plus 6Gb of ram, and a good assortment of ports and expansion options. So I get lots of horsepower at the expense of floor space, lugging out the monitor every time it needs to be rebooted and the fan noise. But it would be SWEET!
If it weren't for my desire to have a small, relatively clean computer area this would have been a no-brainer. Why do I need to make things so complicated?
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