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Ask HN: What's the best value hardware for virtualization?

2 points by incomethax ↗ HN
We just added two more devs to our startup team, and now we're looking to acquire two new laptops for development. Ideally, we would like to get Macs for developing in Cappuccino, but our budget doesn't allow for it right now.

As such we've decided to go the virtualization route and are planning on running OSX in

We're looking to spend a max of $1600 on the hardware. I've already tried running vmware on my personal laptop for which my 32-bit processor is not suited for running a 64-bit OS.

What kind of machines would you recommend?

Is there anything especially important to watch out for while virtualizing OSX?

6 comments

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wmf
All current laptops should have 64-bit processors with virtualization support, although you should probably stay away from Celerons, Pentiums, and Semprons which might be crippled. In your situation I would get 4-6GB of RAM, so factor that into your budget.

Is there anything especially important to watch out for while virtualizing OSX?

The fact that you're running your business on completely unsupported (and probably warez) software?

jwilliams
> In your situation I would get 4-6GB of RAM, so factor that into your budget.

Not many laptops currently support >4Gb of RAM at the moment, so that's an issue too...

Technically the chipsets on the new Mac laptops do, but it's not an Apple-supported option yet. Hopefully in the next rev.

whatusername
anyone want to comment on the legal situation running OSX in a VM? Especially for a company/start-up and not just home user?

I was under the impression that you were breaching the apple license at the minimum?

jwilliams
Your breaching the EULA - only Leopard Server can be virtualized according to Apple. Even then, you still need an OSX host.

Now, as for if the EULA is enforceable, that's another story. Probably varies on the jurisdiction and lots of other factors.

Irrespective, you're wandering into some very dubious legal ground.

jwilliams
> We're looking to spend a max of $1600 on the hardware. I've already tried running vmware on my personal laptop for which my 32-bit processor is not suited for running a 64-bit OS.

If your machine is IA32 it's probably also extremely old.

> Is there anything especially important to watch out for while virtualizing OSX?

If you're talking about OSX and not Darwin:

#1 is that it's of dubious legality (to say the least) - Only the server version is explictly available to run in a VM.

#2 is that the performance will probably be woeful - and likely woeful to being unusable. Particularly if your budget is $800.

There is more, but #1 and #2 are big enough issues in themselves.

For $800 each you could get a Mac Mini, which is probably good enough depending on your needs. You can probably get an older Mini on eBay a lot cheaper.