Get a quad-core. If you have iTunes going, some website running javascript without your knowing it, and you have a computational job running, then you've used up your dual core and things get sluggish. It happens to me all the time on my c. 1996 iMac, which is still (barely) good enough for me.
On Mac v. Linux where calculations come secondary to office-type calculations, you have to weigh your level of vendor lock-in. Do you run Libreoffice or Microsoft Office? Inkscape or Illustrator? Gimp or Photoshop? Etc. If you are locked-in to commercial products and haven't migrated to open source, then you may want to think twice about a Linux box. Macs are very seamless for an office environment, but I don't know if they are appropriate for heavy-duty calculations given that you'll trade horsepower for the Mac experience. James On Jan 22, 2013, at 10:59 AM, Cara Vaughan wrote: > Dear CCP4BB > > I'm thinking about buying a Mac Mini and was looking for advice from people > who have used these for crystallography. > > We don't need the computer to do serious number-crunching as we have back-end > servers that can do this for us, so it is primarily for running coot for > model building, etc. and low intensity crystallography jobs. > > I've seen from the archive that some people do use the Mac Mini for > crystallography and I've got two questions: > 1. Do I need the Quad core or is a Dual core processor enough? > 2. Is the intergrated Intel HD graphics card OK for crystallography > requirements? > > All the best, > Cara. > > > Cara Vaughan > Lecturer in Structural Biology > Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology > Birkbeck College and UCL > London UK > > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
