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If you build the thing yourself making it quiet is very easy.
John
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I've researched and purchased the PC components and assembled it myself. Except once i purchased a computer from a retailer and it ended up to really sound like a 747 taking off  I kept that PC for only 7 months then i went for a new quit one. 
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LOL 
I guess I can call myself fortunate and I will be more cautious about the noise level when purchasing my next desk-top PC! And possibly look for the box to have good ventilation openings.
Yours Truly, The One and Only!
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When you choose the components you can research the noise level of your PSU & GPU, and cooling... I think they're the main offenders.
"For fifty bucks I'd put my face in their soup and blow." - George Costanza CP article: SmartPager - a Flickr-style pager control with go-to-page popup layer.
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For me is the noise level very important. My desktop is in my living room, and I'm working at the night often. So if there is quiet in the room and computer is humming, it's disturbing for me. And also, I'm using it as the DVD player (connected to TV and home theatre). So if there is some quiet scene in the movie, it is important to have quiet power supply (btw not always it depends on power suply only)....
Michal K.
Prague, CZE
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Actually noise level is a big concern for many people (see www.silentpcreview.com). My environment is often pretty quiet and that's when the PC noise can get really annoying. I build my own PC and select quality, quiet parts. They cost more but to me it's well worth it.
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I would have agreed with you except this one time when I had 2 X 25 gig Quantum Fireballs on a raid array...the thing sounded like a jet airplane taking off...was kind of nerve wracking working on that thing for 16 hours a day.
Quiet is something of a factor, but I'd sacrifice it for power if I needed it.
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Then you have a system where the software you develop will work as expected out in the field.
If your app works great on a quad-core, what happens when you try it on a 1.8 GHz laptop?
Price, that ever-moving sweet spot in the market, conincides with what most people have, or are about to get. The next upgrade cycle has just started, and everything will work pretty much as well, or better, performance-wise as it did on your dev system.
And that $300-$400 buck doesn't hurt every few years (less if you buy bare-bones and reuse your parts).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike[^]
"GUI? We Don't Need No Stinkin' GUI !"
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Actually it should be the LOWEST performing users box. If you are developing for the average you are going to annoy a fair % of your users.
Get hold of the lowest spec box you expect to run your apps and test on that. If you are deveoling for the web them the client hardware is irrelevant I beleive (I'm a winforms person myself).
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In a captive environment - maybe. But,in real life? At some point you need to cut off the dregs.
By targeting the lowest, you'll annoy nearly everyone (the degree depending upon the application's purpose). Remember, they didn't buy those shiny new boxes to have them work exactly like their shiny old ones.
One thing that might come into play: the local (national) computer update environmnet. This could (better, should) have an effect on the decision: In places where PC's are a substantial expense, then those at the low-end of performance will probably be relatively greater in number. In the US, user-systems cost as much as what some (rather wasteful) women will spend on fashionable boots.*
There's an old Aesop's Fable, about a Farmer and his son going to market with a donkey. The moral of the story (what story?) is that you can't please everyone - for you'll end up pleasing no one.
* $300-$400 - "A fool and his money are soon parted" - Ben Franklin
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
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I insist the company pays for the home computer, after all I have a VPN into the company from my house, and I occasionly get the odd 'support' call.
The first PC I did but was in ~1994, a 486DX4 100mhz 16mb RAM and ~40MB disk, it cost me £1000, never again.
PC are like cars, after 3 years buying from new there worth 50% of the initial price, something you have to be prepare to swallow, especially when there is always a 'new' model around the corner.
If you're struggling developing software, then I'd recommend gardening.
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I love fast and powerful PCs as well as fast and powerful cars bud
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And you like to spend more than enogh money on that?
------------------------------------------------------------
Want to be happy - do what you like!
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money is earned to spend for good products for me.
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norm .net wrote: PC are like cars
Furthermore, PCs are like women. Once you have one, a better one appears just around the corner.
Hope is the negation of reality - Raistlin Majere
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Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote: Furthermore, PCs are like women. Once you have one, a better one appears just around the corner.
I wouldn't know, I don't look for women on street corners. 
:josh:
My WPF Blog[ ^]
Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
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Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote: Er... uhm... me... me neither... it was... er... a friend, yes, a friend told me...
 Riiiight.
:josh:
My WPF Blog[ ^]
Without a strive for perfection I would be terribly bored.
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Any machine I own has to have “Power and speed”. My home machine is used for development and for playing graphics intensive games (some times). Even without the games, it sill needs to be able to run many applications at the same time. Let’s face it, we as developers often push the speed envelope and need a machine that can compile and run code (tests, and etc..) as fast as possible.
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence."Edsger Dijkstra
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John R. Shaw wrote: Let’s face it, we as developers often push the speed envelope and need a machine that can compile and run code (tests, and etc..) as fast as possible.
Reeaaaally now??
http://www.xkcd.com/303/[^]
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John R. Shaw wrote: Let’s face it, we as developers often push the speed envelope
That doesn't do the final users any good at all. You start to end up with the ever-famous "well, it works on my machine" reply. If it doesn't unduly drag on while I compile, than whatever I'm using is fast enough.
Now - you mention you're a gamer - and that is usually from where the PC Hardware development envelope is driven madly forward. You can keep playing games and get out of that hamster-exercise-wheel: play ROGUE . Download a suitable version from SourceForge, or elsewhere.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
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Yes but a developer who thinks ahead will test the product on the worst box they can find.
djj
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I really really (really) want to agree with what your saying. It's the logical extension of my own posting.
But,
Unless specifically required to by specifications, I gave up bottom-fishing quite some time ago. I consider it akin to knocking myself out attempting to support Win95/Win98 - not if I can help it. It's nice if it works on the living-dead, but beyond tweaks, it's usually not worth the time (=cost) to scavange a few more possible users. (If their machine's that old, they're probably not the buying type, anyway)
I guess I still agree with you in principal, but in practice I'd not go quite that far. My targets are machines in roughly the current sweet-spot (and a reasonable range below).
FWIW, I don't have a single user with VISTA.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
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I tend to be in small shops where there are only a couple of different levels of machines, i.e. some 2000, some XP. Also most code I do is for every one, so if it does not work on a machine I try to get it replaced (sometimes I am even successful).
Hey, my new position I have a XP machine with a Window 98 sticker on it and 512 RAM. So my wanting better comes for a reason. 
djj
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djj55 wrote: Hey, my new position I have a XP machine with a Window 98 sticker on it and 512 RAM. So my wanting better comes for a reason.
That brought up a bad memory: when I first started at my current workplace, I was given a P2 with 128 Mb RAM and Win98. Since I worked from home a lot, it didn't matter - until I started having apps running at their site. Then I needed a real PC. That request was enthusiastically greeted by the IT Director (at that time). Particularly when I noted the repair cycle was a minimum of 2 days if I had to try to fix it (or make any changes) at home - and possibly 10 minutes on site. Itterative debugging was required, the delay was rediculous (and very expensive).
It took 6 months because of a obstructionist/control-freak, in charge of the ordering, simply sitting on the request.
When the sytems finally arrived, their were four Xeon's: one for each developer - and MSDN sub's to go with them. Even at that, the control freak had them all set up identically . . . and expected them to stay that way.
But, I digress.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
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