best cheap easy setup for initial development
jojoleflaire: One thing that took us a while to figure out, but helped immeasurably once we did was getting good, at VM/image based development.So in our case we wrote the code on whatever laptop we liked best (I did most of the coding for first few versions our software on a 12" PowerBook, other folks used ThinkPads or Dells with Windows).But having a beefy server box with enough memory/disk to host a few different VM environments (various QA, staging, multiple different DBs etc.) and the ability to rapidly set up new ones was killer. It makes the laptop choice more a matter of personal preference, and keeps a consistent environment where it counts.