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.
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.