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This works out to about $315 per year for a development machine.

Am I the only one who thinks that's ridiculous? I mean, after two years, you'll already be at the cost of a decent laptop. Three years will get you the cost of a MacBook. Unless you're upgrading your laptop every year, there is no way that this is cheaper than developing on localhost.



its not like its massively more expensive or massively cheapter, so they aren't competing on price.


EC micro instances are 56$/year (reserved) and in a combination with version control tool like SVN I don't see why one would pay > $300/year


The price of resources drops over the years.

You could save for 3 years and buy a macbook.... or you could work in the cloud and use whatever cheap-ass machine you want to access it, with much less worry about backup.

THis isn't really a home-PC replacement - it's a developer hting.


It's accessible from more places than your laptop is, unless you take your laptop with you everywhere. You could demo something to a friend for instance.


It's accessible from wherever you have a computer with the necessary software and a fast enough connection. Sure, if you don't have your laptop then this could be useful, but that's like saying that a land-line based system for managing your address book is good because it's accessible from more places than your phone is, unless you take your phone with you everywhere.


Um, exactly? Memorizing important numbers is a good idea precisely because then you can use a friend's phone in case yours isn't available.


There's this amazing technology called "paper". You should read up on it.


don't forget about energy consumption costs


Maybe I'm missing something, but he still needs a physical computer to connect to his development machine in the cloud right?

I personally think this is expensive for the benefits it brings but clearly for the author it is worth it.


Are you paying for power for a fridge? Then laptop energy consumption is negligible.




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