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Comment by nagrom | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why boot-up time is an issue for a laptop. I cannot remember the last time I rebooted my MBP; the only time it gets switched off is when I have to install security updates which is pretty rare.

Using an Air as your main development machine seems odd to me - I want a large display so that I can read docs/papers and have emacs open at the same time. I also want good separation between screen and keyboard for maintaining decent posture. I hate to use a laptop as my main machine for exactly that reason. My main development machine doesn't get picked up and moved around enough (at all?) to be worth using a high end laptop. For the same price as the machine at the top of the page you could buy a decent desktop and a 13" Macbook and lunch, I guess.

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I reboot my MBP every few days. It gets sluggish if I don't. I'd love to know why you don't have to and I do! I suspect it is the heavy amount of stuff I have running compared to my available RAM? Anyone else have this issue?

Basically I have 4GB of RAM (on the latest MBP) and regularly run: Netbeans IDE, Safari (and a bunch of tabs), Firefox (ditto on the tabs), an FTP client, a Subversion client, iChat, Mail, a notes app, alarm clock, Dropbox, Evernote, terminal, one other text editor (MacVim or Textwrangler), Photoshop, MS Word, a clipboard app and sometimes VirtualBox running Windows XP (with 1GB of RAM assigned).

The killers seem to be Netbeans and VirtualBox. Once I have those both going I know I'm in for a reboot before too long.

I assume it's just a RAM issue but it is annoying that 4GB isn't "enough" (assuming I'm correct about why I have to reboot).

> It gets sluggish if I don't. > ... Netbeans IDE, Safari (and a bunch of tabs), Firefox (ditto on the tabs), an FTP client, a Subversion client, iChat, Mail, a notes app, alarm clock, Dropbox, Evernote, terminal, one other text editor (MacVim or Textwrangler), Photoshop, MS Word, a clipboard app and sometimes VirtualBox

Did you check top? free? You should be able to see what's eating your machine after a few days of uptime.

I did check top and I can see that Netbeans and VirtualBox are the hogs. However, even after quitting them I still have sluggish responsiveness.

That sounds like a herculean load. Everythign running at once?

Does shutting down all the applications and re-opening them help? Something's got to be eating all of your RAM, and it's hard to guess without seeing top/Activity Monitor.

I run VB, FF, thunderbird, adium, MS Office and also have 4GB, with no rebooting problems. It maybe Netbeans; I have no experience with it.

> I don't understand why boot-up time is an issue for a laptop.

Word. For me, every Mac has been instant-on for years. I open the lid or hit the power button (iMac), and the machine is up and running (from sleep) in a second or two.

One scenario that immediately comes to mind is frequent flyers. I note this since I just took a series of flights a few days ago. Say you want to be productive during your six hour red-eye flight. That involves several repetitions of "we are now preparing to descend and land, please turn off all electronic devices at this time." If you're a business user who goes through this on a regular basis, a long boot time could indeed get annoying in a hurry.

I've flown with my Macbook and just let it sleep instead of turning it off. Nobody has ever cared.

I generally just put the laptop to sleep by closing the lid. Macs are generally quite happy about that - the superb power management is one of the major selling points.

On a normal flight "switch off electronics while landing" happens once. If you think otherwise you have failed at flying (sorry, couldn't resist re-using your phrase there).

Austin -> Denver -> Las Vegas. http://flightaware.com/live/flight/SWA420

I read 'your six hour flight' and thought of a single flight. I didn't read 'series of flights' - that's where I slipped up. I failed at reading.

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