I am currently working on a project that is using an (unnamed) Content Management System that refuses to install on Windows Vista, due mainly to IIS and Index Server security issues. So, I tried the Virtual Machine approach, and while that was OK, it just wasn't fast enough. And that was a 2 processor Windows Server 2003 VM with 2GB of memory. So, having built an Intel vPro® desktop system for $599 at Intel's latest Channel Partner workshop last fall, and watched my wife enjoy all of its speed running Vista Ultimate, I searched out most of the components for myself. I already had a Western Digital 74GB Raptor 10,000 RPM SATA II hard drive from my server spares drawer (add $149.99 for an OEM 74 GB drive or, better yet, $169.99 for a 150 GB drive from NewEgg, and there are frequent rebates and specials). I didn't need a monitor or keyboard/mouse because my intent was to run the new box headless over full-screen RDP from my nice 22" monitored workstation running Vista Ultimate 64-bit. Add $150 or so for a nice widescreen monitor and keyboard/mouse and you have a standalone system.
Because of the aforementioned Vista Issues, this is a Windows XP Pro SP2 (soon to be SP3) box. Here's the cost breakdown from my NewEgg WishList. This is a very sweet little box. It takes about 45 minutes to assemble if you've done any recent builds at all. Software installation takes a whole lot longer, but I already had an old XP dev box Acronis True Image disk image that I used to seed this build (but that's the subject of another post). PC Wizard 2008 reports a performance index on this build of nearly 18,000, and that's with integrated shared-memory graphics from the on-board Intel GMA3100! Plus, I was able to install Visual Studio 2008 side-by-side with Visual Studio 2005, and do my development for this project in Visual Studio 2008 with all of that CSS sweetness.
Bob Baker
posted @ Sunday, January 13, 2008 4:00 PM