My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010

Before my trip to India, I bought an HP Mini 2140 netbook. It is a beautiful machine. It weighs only  4 pounds. It has a 1024x576 resolution screen (normal width but short height). It has almost a full sized keyboard. My favorite feature is that, theoretically, it has a 6 cell battery that can last 8 hours – a mind-boggling long amount of time.

The mini came with Windows XP pre-installed. That wouldn’t do. So, I immediately downloaded the release candidate of Windows 7 and installed it on the netbook. The mini does not have a DVD or CD drive. I copied the Windows 7 download to a USB drive and mounted the drive using Daemon Tools. I was able to install Windows 7 from the USB drive.

Next, I installed Windows Live Sync (what used to be called foldershare). Windows Live Sync keeps the files in the My Documents\Everywhere folder synchronized between my normal laptop, my desktop, and my netbook. I can modify a document in my netbook while riding the Microsoft bus into work in the morning, and have the document changes automatically synchronized with my desktop computer in my office.

Finally, I installed Visual Studio 2010 on the netbook. I grabbed the latest build right off the assembly line. Most likely, I am violating every recommendation for the minimum configuration of a computer to run Visual Studio 2010, but so far it has run just fine.

I wasn’t sure if Visual Studio would work on the netbook – the HP Mini’s Atom processor doesn’t exactly make the machine a speed demon. And, you definitely don’t want to run multiple applications while running Visual Studio. However, the experience is good enough to do light coding on an airplane or a bus (I might even try using the netbook to demo Visual Studio 2010 for a talk).

I did experience a moment during the installation process during which I was sure that installation would fail. Visual Studio complained that I did not meet the minimum screen resolution requirements (my netbook was short by a measly 3 pixels). However, I ignored the warning and everything installed without a hitch.

image

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posted on Thursday, May 14, 2009 10:05 AM | Filed Under [ ASP.NET ]

Comments

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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by hp
on 5/14/2009 12:19 PM

That's it. I am no longer sitting on the fence. I am buying a netbook now!!!!
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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by Keith Patrick
on 5/14/2009 12:39 PM

Finally, there's someone else with the guts to run Visual Studio on a netbook! (I'm running 2008 on a Dell Mini 9 along with Office Ultimate) It's usable, although the Mini 9 makes you use the Fn key to type '{' and '}'.
Word of advice, though, if you plan on installing your own OS: buy the Ubuntu version...XP netbooks can't be sold with more than 1 GB or RAM and something like a 16GB SSD (higher for HDDs)
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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by freelance seo
on 5/14/2009 1:45 PM

Ubuntu version isnt good as its a linux. Loads of things are missing, no drivers available, no softwares available, How would you install VS 2010 on ubuntu??
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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by Nik Radford
on 5/14/2009 4:10 PM

I think he meant buy linux and then replace it with your win OS of choice.
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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by Jeff Putz
on 5/14/2009 4:26 PM

My MacBook Pro gets eight hours of battery life too. It just costs eight times as much and is twice the size. :) Walther, FTW!
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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by Gator
on 5/14/2009 7:05 PM

freelance seo, based on your comment, I would assume you have very little to no experience with Ubuntu/Linux. Also, you wouldn't need VS2010 on Ubuntu because you can just install Mono + Monodevelop and keep coding away.

http://monodevelop.com/
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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by Pinaki Ghatak
on 5/15/2009 2:22 AM

Hello Stephen.
All is good, but what I'm interested in, is how do we get the the VS 2010 build, that i NOT a VPC image. From your blog, it seems obvious you are running after installing from the ISO image. So, how do we get this?. Will this be released soon?
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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by Mukhtar
on 5/15/2009 2:57 AM

Hi Stephen,

Just wondering if your session in India will be available on the net after? (like the Mix) In the next release of ASP.Net, will you be able to have all the controls AJAXified?

Hope you enjoy the business trip/vacation there.
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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by NH
on 5/15/2009 5:44 AM

Not really surprising. I got a MSI Wind with Windows 7 & Visual Studio 2008. A little slow, but not annoying-slow at all.
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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by anonymous
on 5/15/2009 8:55 AM

Be careful with that laptop, the Mini 2133 has a design defect that leads to premature death of motherboard; mine has last two monts since I bought it and now is being repaired by HP. It also gets very, very hot on the bottom side.
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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by Keith Patrick
on 5/15/2009 11:53 AM

To clarify, I am referring to buying the machine with the better hardware and then installing Windows on it manually. Alternatively, you can buy the cheapest Windows box and upgrade the memory and SDD yourself, but a lot of that depends on your licensing situation. I'd generally assume that someone with access to VS2008 (and more likely for VS2010) to have MSDN and thus access to various versions of Windows.

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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by Thanigainathan
on 5/15/2009 9:42 PM

Amazing post. Expecting such an knowledge from an expert.

Thansk,
Thani
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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by Alex
on 5/16/2009 1:03 AM

Multi-touch screen and OLED technologies are just around the corner. Might be good idea for many of us to save a few extra bucks while waiting a few extra months and see which way the wind blows. Unless, of course, you really need to be productive very soon. In any case, it's probably is the worst time to buy "top of the range" laptops/desktops/monitors.
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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by Paco
on 5/16/2009 11:44 AM

That sounds great! Do you know if we can also "Grab the latest build from the assembly line" (or just some build) soon?
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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by Jack
on 5/18/2009 5:51 AM

Glad to hear that. I hope our development IDE will not eat too many of our PC resource.
I want to listen to music, open some documents at the same time.
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# re: My HP Mini Runs Visual Studio 2010
Posted by Sonam Kumar
on 6/28/2009 11:09 PM

Hi Stephen,
How much RAM you have in your netbook?

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