Here we go, please take a ride with me as I search out the ultimate mobile developer machine. Why mobile? Because I hate being tied to a desk. I have desk top machines, but I want something with equal power I can take with me. Here is what I am looking for:

Nothing larger than a 15 inch screen. Yes, 15 inches. Any bigger and it’s like lugging around a desktop.
At least 8GB of memory. I would love to have the ability to upgrade to 16GB or even 24GB. Memory is a developers best friend. Next to CPU speed, it’s the key to all goodness.
A hard drive fast enough to keep up with the RAM. I really like what is happening in solid state drives (SSD).
A CPU, well, let’s look at 4, that will allow me to compile in a split second, let me stream video, rip a DVD, all at the same time.
I would love to have built in 3G connectivity, but the more I think about it, the more I would hate to be tied to a specific carrier. So maybe just a USB card will work.
Ability to read just about any memory card. At least 4 super fast USB ports.
Lightweight. This is a mobile machine, remember?

Honestly, that’s about it. Nothing spectacular. The real trick here will be to find one that doesn’t weight as much as your Mothers Cadilac, and doesn’t cost as much as my last Child.

There are really two flavors, an Apple Mac, like a Mac Book Pro, or a PC which can run Windows or Linux. Since I do a lot of Windows development, Linux probably isn’t a viable option. And I don’t want to own a MBP just so I can run Windows on it. You think the simple choice is to go with a PC. But there is more too it than that. I have to make some additional choices, to make the right choice.

First, will I choose to stop developing Windows applications. Honestly, that’s the key question. I can develop everything but Windows applications on a Mac. I know, I know, running Parallels or VMWare Fusion gives me a Windows machine on the Mac, but I don’t want to do that. It doesn’t work all that well on my iMac, and I know it doesn’t do any better on a MBP.

Throw my hat in a ring, and stay there for a while. Honestly, I’m not sure 100% which ring the hat will fall in today. OK, enough of that, off to find The Ultimate Mobile Developer Machine.

What would you recommend?

Google pushed out a new product today called Google Latitude. It basically lets you find friends in geographical locations via Google Maps. This is pretty cool. Loopt has been doing this for a while, and so have others. I’m not really sure I see the value in this, other than its a great way to stalk your friends. If I really wanted to know where someone was, I would just ask them.

The interesting part is it wasn’t released for the iPhone. It does work on the Android of course, Blackberry and Windows Mobile. But with GPS and mapping so tightly integrated into the iPhone, I’m really surprised this was left out of the initial release. I hardly ever used mapping on my Windows Mobile device.

Is Google targeting a service like BrightKite.com, where I can check in at a specific location, or upload photos and give it a geo tag? I can see better uses for this service than just seeing who around me. I would also like to be able to update my social network too, like FriendFeed or Twitter, with a link to my latest location.

I’m not sure if this was intentional or chance, but the map on the Latitude home page was in my general area. Weird, huh? Stalking at its best.

[image title="Google Latitude" size="full" id="1051" align="none" linkto="full" ]

Looking at the new Linux flavored operating system; Ubuntu 8.10, the latest direction is towards the mobile user. It’s obvious more and more users are going the laptop route, and that has been an issue with operating systems like Ubuntu, possibly because of integrated or proprietary hardware.

I’ve been running Ubuntu on my HP laptop for about 7 months now. It has had issues, specifically with audio drivers and power management. The two issues I’m hoping the 8.10 release will fix are (1 and 2 are basically the same);

1. The auto detecting of my USB headset (affiliate link) when it’s plugged into the port
2. The volume control works with my USB headset
3. Manage my battery better. Ubuntu burns through a fully charged battery in under an hour. I should get 2+. It’s a new battery.

I’m installing the OS right now. I’ll run through my own set of tests and write up a secondary post letting you know how it goes.

By the way, my Ubuntu midnight release party was a bust. When the clock turned over, all I saw was Ubuntu 8.10 coming soon… disappointed. I couldn’t download for another 9 hours. Oh well, I have it now.