I'm planning a new workstation for at home. Working with VMWare Workstation or Microsoft Virtual PC is so incredibly slow on my Dell Latitude D810 laptop that I'm looking for something more serious.
My primary use of my PC is programming in Visual Studio 2005/2008, BizTalk and SharePoint development, Windows Mobile. And off course e-mailing, chatting and using the Office suite of products.
15.000 rpm hard disk
What I really want to have is a 15.000 rpm hard disk! The bottleneck is not the CPU, but the hard disk speed (and sometimes the amount of memory). 15.000 rpm disks are the fastest on the market so I'm sure they will make me happy! But unfortunately they are not available with a SATA interface, but only as SAS (the new version of SCSI). And SAS is much more expensive.
While looking on the different computer web stores I found none of them offering a system with SAS and SAS disks out of the box. Except Dell and HP. My last 3 PC's were Dell and I really liked them, so I guess the next one will be a Dell as well.
The Dell Precision computers are high-end workstations. They sell three models: T3400, T5400 and T7400. The last two are Intel Xeon-based. I like the first model with the Intel Core 2 Quad.
Dell Precision T3400
 | After clicking a few minutes I found this system: - Intel Core 2 Quad (2.66 GHz, 1.066 MHz FSB, 8 MB cache);
- Vista Ultimate
- 4,0 GB 800 MHz ECC DDR2 (with option to extend to 8GB);
- 256 MB nVidia Quadro FX 570 graphics card;
- 300 GB SAS hard disk (15.000 rpm);
- 16x DVD +/- RW and separate 16x DVD-ROM station;
- Internal floppy disk station (it's only 5 euro)
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No screen, no mouse/keyboard. I have them already.
There's only one thing that I don't like. The nVidia Quadro graphics card. I'm sure it will work great with AutoCAD, 3D MAX, but it's not a gaming card. Maybe I will replace it later with a better one.
Windows Server 2008 as OS
It's also time to think about the operating system. Dell ships it with Vista Ultimate, which is fantastic off course! But I'm thinking about installing Windows Server 2008 RTM. I've read a blog post of another guy who is very enthusiastic about the performance. He did 15 steps to change his Server 2008 to workstation:
- Disable shutdown tracker;
- Disable IE Security
- Enable Wireless support;
- Enable Audio support;
- Install hardware drivers;
- Enable Vista experience (Aero, Media Player, etc.);
- Enable themes;
- Enable .NET 3.0;
- Enable Windows Search;
- Enable SuperFetch (although it's not always working great);
- Install Messenger with a hack (latest 8.5 is not working);
- Install older Skype, latest version is not working;
- Install Office 2007;
- Install Visual Studio 2008;
- Settings processor scheduling
And I'm planning running virtual machines for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003.
Local computer store
It's Saturday afternoon and I'm going to the shopping center of Utrecht. Maybe I find something cool there in the local computer store.