Software Developer? What's your work PC spec?

[aftershxck]

Just curious as to what spec PCs people are using if you work in software/web development, and what kind of apps you have open the majority of the time.


The reason I ask is because my work pc is as follows:

Pentium 4 2.6 GHz (single core, no hyperthreading)
2/3 gig of ram.

The programs I have open 95% of the time are:

Eclipse development environment with lots of plugins.
JBoss service for running enterprise web apps (I run this through Eclipse).
Multiple internet explorer/windows explorer sessions
MS SQL analyzer
MS SQL profiler
Visual Studio 2005 (editing xml files).

I can't stress how damn slow this is - when starting JBoss my whole machine is crippled (100% cpu usage) for a whole 10 minutes. Windows restart takes ~10 mins (5 mins for all progs to exits, 5 mins to load everything). Internet explorer takes 10-15 seconds to open in some cases and so on.

I just wanted to see whether this kind of thing is the norm in companies? (some people have quad cores here, mines one of the, if not the slowest pc!).

For reference my home pc is an AMD X2 4400 (running stock at 2 gig), with 2 gig of G-Skill ram, DFI motherboard and so on - this is at *least* 2 years old and its 3-5 times faster than my work pc!

 

[aftershxck]

Thanks for the views.

I meant 2 or 3 gig of ram (can't remember which), and I'll look into optimising MS SQL server...

However the PC is definitely impeding my performance with all the wasted minutes/frustrating feelings throughout the day. The pc is some HP or Dell btw.

I've only been here less than a year but still.... I'm even tempted to ask someone higher up the ranks if I could build my own (work) PC and if they'd subsidise the cost? What are peoples thoughts on this? Also, I don't want people thinking, "that smarmy ****** building his own pc for WORK!" or something

I.e. I could get something even faster than my home pc for less than 500 pounds (not saying this is pocket money to me ~ it's nearly 2 weeks wages - and I'm desperately saving every penny for a car, which puts into perspective how bad this pc is !!!).

 

[aftershxck]

Shouldn't need to be doing that - brining in a spare stick of RAM from home is one thing, but you shouldn't have to be paying out of your own pocket for hardware and relying on subsidies.

If you ask for an new machine and provide some evidence (perfmon logs or whatever showing prolonged period of 100% cpu usage and peak commit charge exceeding physical memory), together with an explanation of how this affects your productivity, then you may find they are willing to accomodate your request. I think this is likely to go further than the "my pc is really slow!!" type whinges some make.

OK I'll knock up some evidence