I am a newbee in the workstation /server world. I am going to buy hardware to do biological modelling involving data input/output, R programming (an statistical language) and a few graphics visualization (some GIS). I would prefer to run debian on whatever I buy. I have some :)) money for this project (ca.4500 euros) and I am unable to decide myself what would be the best solution: an apple Xserver dual G5 2GHz or an Sun Blade 1500 Worksation. Both are the same price but. Here are the specs of each: ---------------- Sun Blade 1500 Workstation 1 1-GHz UltraSPARC IIIi Processor 1-MB On-Chip L2 Cache Sun XVR-600 Graphics Accelerator 1-GB Memory 1 80-GB 7200 RPM IDE Disk Drive 1 10/100/1000 BaseT Ethernet Port 7 USB Ports 2 IEEE 1394 Ports 2 Serial Ports 1 Parallel Port 5 PCI Slots 16x DVD-ROM Drive Smart Card Reader Solaris 8 HW 5/03 Operating System Pre-Installed
---------------- Xserver G5 Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 1GB DDR400 ECC SDRAM - 2x512 80GB ADM (1x80GB Serial ATA) CD-ROM Mac OS X Server, Unlimited License ---------------- Which are the cons and pros of each setup? As far as I understand the Xserver would be more easy to upgrade and better for databases and the blade system more powerful, particularly for the graphics (which are not the main difficulty of my project). Is this correct or does the higher Hz of the Dual G5 mean it is much faster than the UlraSparc???? Thanks, Angel
