I rarely use SB for anything but when I do it is usually a 5 or 6 panel system. The most recent system was an AES and AAE with 6 4L panels and a few ML for local TV controls. Nothing fancy and we needed to hit a very tight price point so programming labor wasnt allocated for anything other SB programming (4 hours programming labor - yes, it was done in less and was easy enough to do in SB even with some custom logic).

For you guys trying to figure out what you need in a machine to do your job, look at gaming machines. I realize that some people will protest and say that I am wrong and that you dont need that much horsepower. I call bullsh*t. When you buy tools, be it hand tools or power tools, do you buy the best money can buy or the throw away crap in the bargain bin by the check out at Lowe's? I'm willing to bet you buy the best tools money can buy because you HAVE to have them work each and every time. Well, if you have moved into the world of programming you need to go out and buy the best damn tools money can buy. Does that mean you need to go drop $8k on a Falcon Northwest Fragbook DRX? No but it does mean that you need to look at machines in the $1800+ range. You will need to buy an adapter for serial communications as well and that should come from Quatech and will cost around $140 or so. Then you need a case that is durable, a human sized travel mouse, mouse pad, USB thumb drives, various memory cards for processors (assuming Crestron here), cables for loading processors and remotes, etc. You HAVE to have good tools to do your job. Go for the big ass screen with the highest resolution you can get and make sure you look for a machine with discrete video RAM, instead of the onboard crap in the low end machines.

To put this in perspective for you, I can run SB, 5 copies of SIMPL, Photoshop, Fireworks, Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Pandora or iTunes and surf the net using IE (just like I am now) without any issues. No slow down at all. The longer I have to wait to accomplish a task the less efficient I am as a programmer. This is equivelant to an installer trying to put on a compression connector with two pairs of channel lock pliers. It can be done but wouldnt it make more sense to buy the correct tool and just be done with it?