Ive been thinking about buying a portable computer for going outside(since its warm out), laying on the couch, and stuff like that, while i program. All the netbook/laptop will be for is programming. And listening to music of course. I looked at a netbook at Staples and they seem a bit small for doing anything productive on. So i was wondering if anyone owns and programs, primarily, on a netbook. If so, is it tough to type or view the text editor (visual studios preferably)? Should i not bother with a netbook, and dump more money into an actual laptop? Note that it is only for programming (and of course running my 2D games).

Blaaargh. Even my single 22 inch monitor and 2 GB RAM desktop aren't enough for the programming I do.

I own an Eee 702, and the keyboard is one of the finger-shreddingest things you'll ever use.

You can get work done on it, but I definitely wouldn't think of it as anything close to a productive machine. The build quality is also uniformly bad across all the netbooks I've tried so far; the price requires flimsy plastics, corner-cutting construction and a lack of thermal optimization or usability consideration.

Like Promit says, I even have trouble keeping everything visible on dual 19" monitors.

I evaluated a netbook briefly for the same purpose, and came to the conclusion that it is not very good for actual productive work that requires from moderate to high amount of human interaction (programming, arts etc).

I've found that a laptop with good display resolution and a responsive keyboard is suitable for programming in general. However, professional laptops that exhibit these characteristics are usually far more expensive than the usual "supermarket" models.

I have an Asus W2JB, which is a great laptop, but it drives me nuts for coding. It's a 17" widescreen but I'm used to a dual 22"/17" setup so it's painfully cramped. The keyboard is probably the best I've seen on a laptop, but even still it's compact and slightly more annoying to use than a desktop keyboard. The little touchpad is, of course, the tool of Satan, so I use a wired mouse most of the time.

I thought I'd do a fair amount of programming and such from that laptop, but as it turns out I can't stand it when my real workstation is sitting in the next room. It's fine for traveling and such, but as a daily work machine... nope.


IMHO, stick with desktops for serious work. They're cheaper, more readily upgradeable, and much more conducive to heavy lifting.

For me 13 inch laptops are the best route for (mobile) coding.

Still small enough to cary around ... but not so small that the keyboard is scaled down.


edit:
Sure it's nice to say "use a desktop" ... but when you're moving around all the time, ESPECIALLY if you're a student, mobile coding is just far too convinent to pass up.

I'm coding a lot on my 12" hp 2730p. I do this when ever I'm programming "at the front", means, at a client.

Works great, but the 1280x800 are something to get used to :)

At home, I can work on a 24" @ 1920x1080.

But at least the keyboard on the tablet works great so I'm really fast.


Just for Info, I write software for Clubs and Bars, so "at the front" Coding is great :) drinking a Coke, fixing some bug, publish and test with the client.

Could do this all night long :) (and done so, several times :))

I'm using c# and clickonce. The Club / Bar has a Winhomeserver for backups and shared data, and an sql express database on it. The apps get deployed up there, and down to the clients. All without any hazzle :)

I've written a hello world program in VS2008 on my Asus 1000HE :P It seems like with the right window layout and a good small programming font, regular programming wouldn't be bad at all. I definitely wouldn't try 3D game development though. Also, I actually really like the keyboard and don't feel that it's compromised at all.

Quote: Original post by Ivko
I definitely wouldn't try 3D game development though.

Are there any netbooks with Shader Model 3.0 support?

The Nvidia Ion based netbooks should support DX10 (via an integrated 9400M), but I don't know if there are any on the market as of yet.