Visual Studio for lightweight development?

[Brad]

Hey all. Just curious if anyone has tried installing Visual Studio and, more importantly, tried any development with it? I know the SP3 is definitely the better choice overall for that situation but I do the bulk of my development at home on my desktop and I'm curious if the S3 would suffice for lightweight development? I know it's not likely to run a full Windows VM but also curious if it would run the Windows Phone emulator and/or the Android emulators (I believe Android through virtual box).

I'm mostly curious about the S3 because I'm looking for a portable development solution without breaking the bank. I was leaning towards the 4/128 SP3 but I'm in Canada and it would seem that Microsoft has recently made a substantial price bump to the whole SP3 line.

Thanks in advance!

 

[sharpuser]

Hi, @Brad

The SP3 should work fine for you as a development machine. Make sure you have plenty of space for projects, as I did, though you can use an external or SDXC medium if you choose.

My development is for geophysical software, with extreme number crunching and 3D graphics / animation.

 

[Brad]

Thanks for the reply but I was more so curious about the new Surface 3 as opposed to the Pro 3. I may end up just springing for the SP3 but really curious if the Surface 3 could handle Office 365 dev and potentially Windows Phone/Android.

 

[sharpuser]

Oh, sorry.

Because you are obviously a programmer, I would think you are in for regrets going for the S3 and not a Pro. Processing speed will be important, since the VS requires number crunching both locally and remotely.

I know the money is an issue. But find a way, is what I say.

 

[Brad]

Thanks for the feedback, appreciate it.

I had a SP2 8/256 in the past, but not springing for that model this time as a secondary dev machine since the price bump. They're now charging $1569 for the i5/8GB/256 and $160 for the type cover . Hoping the 4GB/128 will suffice...or someone can be a guinea pig for me with the Surface 3, haha.

 

[GreyFox7]

A couple of reviewers did mention using Visual Studio on the Surface 3 so for some things you can get by. although you mention phone development which I believe requires Hyper-V and that would require the Pro OS SKU but I'm still not sure you can get Hyper-V running I heard conflicting reports on that.

This from the arstechnica review:
The processor even supports the VT-x virtualization extensions, so it could be used to host virtual machines in Hyper-V or VMware. Unfortunately, the Surface 3's firmware turns VT-x off and offers no ability to turn it back on. Microsoft tells us this is something that the company is looking into. While the machine will obviously never be a VM-hosting power house, the ability to fire up, for example, the Windows Phone emulator (which depends on Hyper-V) would have been neat.

 

[hkhoanguyen]

VS 2013 works fine on my surface 3

 

[Musiker]

Im also using VS2013 and working on lightweight windows apps is ok with the 4GB model, but I will bring my laptop if I need to do a alot of work while on the road, it's is more comfortable to work on (Macbook pro 15" non retina).. If you can live with a laptop for portable solution, can get a better development machine for the same money...
The price of the S3 is high if you are not interested in a tablet or the ultraportable and low power...