However I really value mobility especially around the house and the Macbook Air 13"/8GB/256GB comes highly recommended by peers. I had an epiphany thinking that perhaps I could rent a dedicated server to relieve the memory and disk requirements. With an Intel i7-2600 Quad/16GB/6TB-raid1 from Hetzner.de (50 Euro p.m), I could host all my Windows desktop VM's and also a few Ubuntu server VM's and use remote desktop and SSH to access them respectively. I realize there will be some additional latency but that’s fine for what I need to use them for and I have a 60Mb/s fiber connection.
Has anyone else attempted something similar? Am I missing anything? My preliminary research points me to using Linux KVM as the host. Can I really forgo the weight/size of a Retina 15" (+- $3900 here in Europe) for the Macbook air ($2300) + a remote server. Obviously I would be sacrificing the Retina screen and the dedicated GPU but neither is important to me, especially as I spend half my time plugged into a 24" monitor + mechanical keyboard. Additionally I'm not concerned about the cost of a server as I already have many very underutilized servers at my disposal and so it wouldn't cost any extra. Any advice would extremely helpful. Cheers!
If it were not for the odd reboot, it is a "set and forget" kind of thing.
Admittedly, the Chromebook does have its limitations compared to a Macbook Air. Ubuntu on it has its quirks, but I'm willing to deal with it and wait for issues to be ironed out. A Macbook Air would definitely not have such issues.
I usually do mobile app development, web development, data crunching in Python for my Masters, and I haven't run into any problems doing what I need to do. I love the portability and simplicity.
I'd seriously recommend it.
http://www.xitijpatel.com/2012/12/16/google-chromebook-and-u...
I've taken the system through about 10 countries in 2 years. I don't really have a house, and I have to carry everything with me. (That includes a video camera, a heavy pro DSLR, chargers, etc.)
I do use VMWare, plus occasionally game, video edit, etc. and so have similar performance requirements.
Given the above, and that recently my partner bought a new Macbook Air (far cheaper), and we took both of them travelling around a few months of Indonesia, Thailand, etc., I think I am well informed to comment.
My advice would be this: Think very carefully about comfort and workflow, before money.
Comfort-wise, for me, having a large screen and keyboard are non-negotiable. The difference is huge, particularly if you want to use the thing instead of a desktop for any length of time (eg. multi-country mobility, like my situation).
Workflow-wise, it's ultimately all about your specific situation. In my situation, I don't have enough space to store all my raw images, VMs, video, etc. but have come to a good solution with a secondary small form-factor external USB3 drive I access from the Mac (via rsync over SSH and a Linux VM, no less! I don't trust non-ext3 filesystems after bad experiences! Some driver I found claiming ext* support on OSX never worked.). I've never had an SSD-is-primary-drive machine, so don't feel there is any issue with speed.
As for remote ... depends on the connection quality and reliability where you are planning to go.
Sounds to me like you could probably solve your build/test issues by queueing testing via your development process, eg. by syncing your new code only when online and using a remote (eg. EC2-hosted) continuous integration server which could probably resolve a lot of issues you never knew you had, as well as the ones you are looking at. That way you could use cloud windows boxes spun up automatically from platform-linked images, potentially bringing them up and down automatically with your CI server.
If you are worried about money, don't be. We forget how much time we spend in front of these things. It's far better to invest in good tools. Really. I mean, 60Mb/s fiber in Europe, don't worry about a few ms, or a few hundred dollars. Worry about your health.
- Do I require the dedicated video card and is that video card worth $1000+ increased bill
So if you're only looking to do development, go for the MBA since it's better cost for use. The Retina doesn't matter if you're always plugged in like I am.
Your only question you should ask yourself is, do you either want to use multiple monitors which the MBA can not do or do you want to be able to play games that require the video card?
Latency to me is not a problem. I live in asia and there is internet everywhere. Would it really make that much of a difference for you?
8GB of ram + SSD will get you far!
I use my computer for web development, watching a few high resolution movies and playing to some humble bundle games. I didn't buy a MacBook Air because of the integrated graphic chip (some of my friends have one and using it with a 27' monitor made the MBA/MPB 13' really really hot, especially during the summer ; it was around 30/35°C in France). Plus I ended up doing my internship in a company where their core knowledge was working using WebGL. Anyone trying to use our product with a MBA/MBP 13' couldn't because of the integrated graphic.
I also tried to work directly on a server (for coding), it's really great but as soon as you don't have Internet (either you use your phone for the connection or you are stuck and you can't work) you are stuck. And I've been stuck more than I thought I will. I didn't know about mosh at the time and had also a few problems with connection/deconnection and that is really painfull when you are using a few ssh terminal at the same time.
As contingencies said, it's really about comfort, carrying one more kilo was not a problem for me and even if I could spare spending more money having the setup I needed and not being "stuck" when doing something is better than not spending a few euros.
The Air is very thin, and weighs in at 1.35Kg, but has a weak CPU and Intel graphics.
The rMBP is not that extremely thin, but it's amazingly thin as well, a lot thinner that the old MBPs and other laptops. It weighs only 2Kg which still makes it very light to carry around. I'd say that for portability, the new 15" rMBP is great. Light and small enough to carry but still powerful enough to work on. Given that it has a i7 CPU, GF 640 graphics card, 16GB RAM, a retina display, and almost the same battery life as the air, which is 6-7 hours.
You can host your VM's on a remote server if you like, but as far as choosing Air vs rMBP, the rMBP is an obvious winner, except if you mind the higher price tag.
Even considering bed use, I'd still go with a rMBP over an Air, for the rest of the advantages.
The one thing you might find annoying is that the rMBP can get pretty hot when under stress, e.g. if you watch a movie in bed, it will get warm around the top rows of the keyboard. The way I hold it, it doesn't really bother me that much, though after I got it I took it to an Apple store because I was worried with how hot it would get. You can use something like smcFanControl to turn up the fans, which will make it cool down fast, but it's nicer to use it in bed without it making any noise at all.
If you'd like to see exactly how hot it gets, just go to an apple store, and stress it's CPU a bit
e.g. open a terminal and pipe yes to dev null in 16 processes:
for i in {1..16}; do yes > /dev/null &; done
It should get really warm in ~2 minutes, you can walk around while this happens. (when done, remember to kill the processes: killall yes)
I suggest you install a Windows XP, Win Server inside the virtual, turn on the "automatic start up" on that VM, just after you the automatic start up of your virtual FW and use RDP with a 2 factor authentication (duo security is free and works beautifully), which now is you "management" machine.
Just my 2 cents on Virtual Security, since this is the setup I have :)
I've never looked back.
Thanks to git, SSH, screen and Dropbox, syncing is super easy.
Once in awhile, it is a bit annoying when I need to process some large files and I'm on a plane or something. Then the slowness of the Mac Air kinda shows. But otherwise, it's perfect. It's also ideal since I can push jobs to my desktop and use my Mac for personal stuff.
I would make sure to use virtualization software on my server that also runs on my laptop so I could easily grab a local copy of a VM to take with me on a flight, etc.
Do you always stay connected to the internet when you need to work / how much would it affect your productivity if you weren't able to access a remote server? I imagine the latency would get annoying, even if it were minor.
My x220 limited to 8GB in ever bit of published Lenovo literature, but I bought 16GB of RAM at the same spec as the 8GB I have running now and everything works fine.
Right now I'm using a Macbook Pro 2012 w/o the Retina. I do all my development on Linode servers, remotely. I get 6 hours of battery life and the machine is a pleasure to work on. I wouldn't go back to my old Windows laptop, where I used PuTTY to work.
A colleague went with Air + VPN to his home lab, but that fails when your customer works "in a bunker" (i.e. heavy-handed firewalls and proxies, common in financial sectors).
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/swap-your-laptop-ipad-li...
Normally when I travel I need internet access anyways to do all my tasks (fix and/or deploy something), so a local environment isn't very important to me. I guess if I was some coffee house coder doing dev work I'd go for laptop
If you loose the connection you're screwed anyway, except if you work in some long term isolated part of a system.
Else, you have no access to the repo for other people's commits, no mail or IM contant to see what to work on etc, no way to check documentation/Stack Overflow/etc, no way to connect and make changes to the deployment servers, etc.
But it's not like people don't have access to the network on travels, anyway. In most hotels, coffee-houses etc you can get a wifi connection easily, and that's even in places like major African cities.
I get awful headaches using anything more reflective than the MBA display, so unfortunately Apple's retina notebooks are all unusable for me. It is something to consider if you are coming from a high quality matte display like a Thinkpad.
On the positive side Hetzner are an excellent host, unbeatable value and amazing support.
I happen to have a pretty beefy PC at home, so I just RDC into that for my Visual Studio and compiler needs (I think I'm one of about seven people who develop .NET on a Mac!)
Personally I'd go with a new Thinkpad. MBPros are nice but the new ones are completely non-upgradable which is a real deal breaker. I've used a T500 for a little over 4 years now with nothing but more RAM, a new SSD, and a storage bay HDD.
Basically means I have a 3 screen portable setup which works quite well.
I do basically what you're proposing here, with a lightweight ultrabook, and it works very well.
It seems like a reasonable idea to me if you always have a fast connection.
Before, I had a MacBook Pro with a HDD. I would use my iPad whenever I could, because it'd be instantly on and feel faster in use. My MBA has a 256GB SSD and it feels just as fast as my iPad.
Back to the main topic: I keep Windows VMs, version management and backups at a dedicated server at Leaseweb. Local copies are kept on the MBA and a Mac mini at home (where it's also backed up to external disks by SuperDuper). This way, I can always choose to work on my iPad or MBA, files are accesible from everywhere.
Also, I think you will be very very very hard pressed to find anyone who owns a Macbook air who would tell you to get anything else. People who don't own them underestimate them and they're not anywhere near as underpowered as people act like.
