I’ve been in just about the same cycle for almost 15 years now. Install Windows. Install the software I need on top of it. Wait about 6 months to a year until I can no longer take the gunk slowing down my system (“Windows Disease”). Backup my data. Format my drive. Rinse and repeat. Do this maybe 3 or 4 times, and then upgrade my hardware. Sound familiar?
So I got smarter. I started making images using Ghost. This has worked fairly well. I get a new system, I set it up as pristine and fully featured as possible, then I take an image of it. This way the install step takes a couple button presses, leaving me to do more useful things with my time. Like blog or something.
Fast forward a couple years. Processors are way faster and have more cores. Virtualization is no longer a toy, and can now be used not just for enterprise purposes, but on the desktop. Sure I’m mostly a Windows developer, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to write iPhone / Mac applications. So after cursing my previous laptop up and down on a daily basis, I’ve upgraded to a MacBook Pro. It’s tiny, it’s fast, and it runs OS X and WINDOWS via VMWare Fusion. Windows runs spectacularly on my MacBook. The most beautiful part is, as far as I can tell, there is no parallel (no pun intended) to “Windows Disease” on a Mac. It has continued to run as fresh and fast as the day I installed the OS. Now with my backed up copy of my Windows virtual machine, starting from scratch on Windows is as simple as taking a fresh copy and spinning up the backup VM.
If I wasn’t sold on switching after my first macbook, the perfect migration from my first to my second certainly sealed the deal. It moved my programs! MY PROGRAMS!!! I used to laugh at people when they wanted me to move programs to their new PCs without their install CDs. Turns out it wasn’t the user who was stupid, just the OS they were on. Jeez.
Hi Jason. I’m also thinking on switch to Mac as my main dev plataform in the near future. My main concern is how this can impact on the workflow, since you must work on mozilla/webkit as the main platform, and then boot 2 or more VMs to do compatibility tests on IE. Also, form controls are very different, did you have any problems with them?
Thanks!