My New Demo Laptop
Some Kind Of Wonderful…
I have just taken delivery of a brand new laptop to replace my 18-month old Dell Latitude E6500, and I am now the proud owner of an HP EliteBook 8540w with the following specifications:
- Intel i7-720QM Processor (Quad-Core, 1.60 GHz, 6 MB L3 cache)
- 16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM
- 2 x USB 3.0 & 1 x eSATA Ports
- NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M graphics with 1 GB dedicated DDR3 video memory
In addition I have bought a second drive bay, replacing the built-in DVD/CD RW drive, containing a Corsair F120 solid state drive, which I use to store my demo Virtual Hard Drives (VHDs). I have used this change of hardware to change my demo platform from a combination of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1 and Oracle VirtualBox running on Windows 7 to Microsoft Hyper-V running on Windows Server 2008 R2.
Before I delve into the details of how I set up my Hyper-V configuration in another post, let me say that the performance of this machine is just tremendous. Being able to allocate more than 12GB RAM to a virtual machine, in combination with a blisteringly fast solid state drive, means no more demo performance issues. If you are struggling with CRM demos running on PCs with 8GB RAM (or heaven forbid, even 4GB), I would recommend this configuration in an instant.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.