On May 2, 2009, at 7:01 AM, Peter Schmidtke wrote:
We have both, OSX and Linux workstations in our lab,
but for computational needs you would have to buy a Mac Pro
workstation
that is expensive compared to the PC counterpart. Else on cheaper
iMacs you
can not do heavy calculations, the system is not made for this.
I haven't found this to be the case. My 3 year old 20" imac is still a
screamer. It's probably only 1/2 as fast as the fastest and most
modern linux workstations I've used. I split crystallography computing
between remote linux boxes, a mac mini, and an iMac, depending mostly
on where the files happen to be.
Incidentally, I wouldn't use windows outside of a VM, which I boot up
only when testing software I've written. I find it hard to believe
people actually use it for science. My opinion is that any OS without
ssh, ftp, a web server, a full suite of scripting language
interpreters, a full suite of compilers, and a full suite of
development tools as part of the standard distribution is a joke or a
ripoff. I guess windows falls in that category.
James
