[News] Top Secret Test Results: Servoy runs on a Dell laptop

by David Workman & Troy Elliot
Data Mosaic

For those of you who Data Mosaic has helped get your Servoy solutions up and running over the past months, it is no secret that Data Mosaic's Troy Elliot is a guru when it comes to servers and hardware. No matter what the operating system or database setup, he can make it hum for you.

I guess it shouldn't have surprised me then when one day recently he walks in with a Dell laptop that he relieved from its dust gathering duties on a shelf in my office. "Hey Dave, check this out."

Mind you, the last time he said this to me I was barraged with more technical terms than my brain could handle in one sitting. So with some trepidation, I peeked over his shoulder at...

"Ahem...Troy...." "Yes Dave." "Is that Mac OS X running on my Dell laptop?" "Yup."

"Troy...." "Yes Dave." "Is that Servoy running on Mac OS X running on my Dell laptop?" "Yup."

"Troy...." "Yes Dave." "Remind me, what planet are you from again?"

Details

With Apple's announcement last year that they will be switching over to Intel chips, much speculation about the ability to hack Mac OS X onto non-mac hardware has been going around the net. Some smart people from Troy's home planet figured it out over at OSx86 Project.

What is really freaky about all this is that it does actually work. Really well. Servoy is more responsive on this 2.4Ghz Dell laptop than my 1.5Ghz Mac Powerbook. It positely blows Troy's iBook out of the water. Native apps such as Safari are blazingly fast -- Safari easily keeps up with my dual-2.0Ghz workstation.

While some non-native apps that run in Rosetta don't actually run, Servoy and Sybase are completely stable. In fact, Troy is now using the Dell over his iBook to develop with and it chugs along as expected. The only notable difference is that Servoy developer takes a long time to load up the first time you start it. Remeniscent of what it used to be like on Macs about six months ago. I'm guessing the plist file needs to be modified again. (EDIT: apparently this initial delay is due to Sybase starting up. Sybase is not a universal binary yet. Transaction speed with Sybase once it is running is fine with the limited data sets we use with developing.)

Picture Gallery

We'll post some higher res pictures here soon. For now, here's some from my camera phone.