Dear Stefano, we recently purchased several Precision T1500 from Dell. They contain an Intel Core i7-870 CPU, NVIDIA Quadro FX580, 4GB RAM and 250GB disk space. They cost about 600-700EUR (prices got up for the second order, maybe because Christmas approaches).
It was installed with Debian stable (following a comment from Clemens Vonrhein, I moved away from Debian Testing for the group's workstations because "testing" is a lot less hassle). Since the current Kernel does not support the onboard network chip, we additionally purchased Intel Pro/1000GT PCI adapters. These machines are charmingly fast. The machines were equipped with two displays, one 20" model from Dell and one Zalman 3D monitor. Even with two monitors, the total cost of one such machine is well below your price limit. We have very little problems with these machines and the installed software, but you can probable take your own favourite linux distribution, I do not think that makes much difference. I consider the life time of a decent workstation to be about 3 years, after that technology has advanced so much that you really would love to get a new one. And even though I am not a great fan of Dell in terms of quality, 3 years is about the lifetime for a Dell machine, too, especially if you by a 3years warranty (included in the above estimate). Tim On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 10:28:28AM +0200, Benini Stefano (P) wrote: > Dear All, > > > > I need to buy a Linux workstation to run crystallographic software and > graphics like ccp4, mosflm, coot., etc., > > Could you please suggest me a good combination of hardware and which linux > operating system to install (ubuntu?)? I can spend about 1500€ > > Technology evolves so fast that I really want to be up to date not to be > already late! > > > > Thank you very much in advance > > > > Stefano > > > > > > Stefano Benini, Ph.D. > > Assistant Professor > > > > http://pro.unibz.it/staff2/sbenini/ > > > > **************************** > > Bio-organic Chemistry Laboratory > > Faculty of Science and Technology > > Free University of Bolzano > > Piazza Università , 5 > > 39100 Bolzano, Italy > > Office (room K2.11): +39 0471 017128 > > Laboratory (room E.012): +39 0471 017901 > > Fax: +39 0471 017009 > > *************************** > > > -- -- Tim Gruene Institut fuer anorganische Chemie Tammannstr. 4 D-37077 Goettingen phone: +49 (0)551 39 22149 GPG Key ID = A46BEE1A
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