World: r3wp

Just got a Playstation 3. The experience so far reminds me much of 
when I bought my first Amiga, an A500 back in 1987. Let's see, if 
I'm as hooked in the next days and weeks as I was back then.

Geomol, will you be able to play Mass Effect and Halo 3 on it? :-)

Probably not. :-)

Favorite setup configs; hardware recommendations; what hasn't worked 
for you.

My current machine is 3.5 years old, and is starting to breathe heavily 
at times, and take little naps when it chooses. It's time to think 
about the future.

This setup will be for software development and remote administration. 
It can be a big box, but I'm not opposed to docking a small machine, 
as long as I can use a good monitor and my ergo-keyboard.


What are your favorite setup configs? Have multiple monitors helped 
you? Lots of disk space? An in-house NAS? etc. On the software side, 
what general infrastructure bits do you use? I like Reichart's drive 
model, and have used it very well with Ghost and Partition Magic, 
but haven't gone to PGP or TrueCrypt (yet).


Hardware wise, after setting up a machine with a fast SAS drive, 
man, that's appealing, but expensive. What kind of KVM do you like, 
or do you avoid them (my epxerience is mixed)? Do you like separate 
machines or VMWare? Do you like a Mac base, and emulation, or a real 
Windows machine? Any converts from Win to *nix? Build your own, or 
who do you like these days? Plain Jane, or something special like 
they build for traders? Silent PC? Mini?

What have you tried that didn't work out?


Space is not an issue. I have a huge old surplus desk that will hold 
anything.

My Mac iBook is the best machine, I've bought in more than a decade. 
I've used it daily for more than 2 years without any problems at 
all. I plan to get a Mac Mini and a flat HD monitor in the near future. 
I hope to have better Mac support for REBOL with R3. I find, that 
I get more work done with a Mac, because it just works. When I have 
to use Windows, I use Remote Desktop Connection from my Mac to a 
Win machine at work.

I still use 1.8GHZ Athlon machine, I have ability to use 2 notebooks, 
or other hw. The main trouble for me is noise. When I come home, 
in the evening, I would prefer silent pc. So, even my current set-up 
has some Arctic Cooling Silent Pro CPU cooler and my gfx card is 
fan free. I also bought power supply with big 12cm fan, as fanless 
(passive is quite expensive). If you want to silent your pc, go and 
read some sites, as:

-  www.silentpcreview.com
- www.mini-itx.com
- www.epiacenter.de


IMO nowadays you need all those fancy DualCore CPUs only if you do 
some CPU crunching intensive work, e.g. video, sound editing, etc. 
Other than that, I can bet your PC is pretty much overspecced. I 
remember doing fine with Duron750, with enough of memory and windowsXP. 
If your PC starts lagging, then just reinstall XP from scratch ...


I will live with my current set-up for another one - two years, and 
then I plan on completly silent PC, maybe even without HD, with gigabit 
local network plus wi-fi around the house.  I will combine it with 
some new hi-fi set-up, as my Technics set-up starts to be a bit aged 
(12 years) ...

as for two monitors set-up - go for that, absolutly. I worked with 
that for more than year. If someone tells you, that the experience 
is the same as having wide 21" display, than don't believe him, unless 
such person tried both set-ups - I did .....

There seems to be new trend though - buying really big LCDs - 24" 
or so ... Dunno how I would like to work on such big display :-)

in my above post, it is www.epiacenter.com

I've heard many good things about the Apple Cinema Displays: http://www.apple.com/displays/

The 23-inch model is 1920x1200 pixels, which is enough for HD, 1920x1080. 
But there is something about a standard (HDCP), and that's not supported 
on the Apple displays, afaik, so it might not be the perfect monitor. 
Apple hasn't updated their displays in a long time, so maybe there's 
something new just around the corner, who knows.

I think, it's ok with a big monitor, if it has high resolution. Then 
it feels ok to sit so close to the image. And you start using your 
OS desktop in a new way, having e.g. the browser window at one side, 
other windows on the other side, etc. instead of always on top of 
each other.

I'm at 1600x1200 now, and would like more space, particularly for 
remote monitoring bits, though I could also do it virtually. If going 
multi-monitor I'd like to do it from the start, rather than try to 
add later.

About noise, as Pekr wrote about. Even if my iBook has a fan, it 
very rarely starts, so my computer is totally noise free, which I 
really enjoy. The new MacBooks are the same, and battery lasts for 
6 hours. I'm not sure, if the MacMini is the same!?

(I sounds like an Apple salesman, yuk!) ;-)

:-) I went to a Ruby meeting, to talk about REBOL and scout for local 
developers, and two of the five people had MacBooks. Of course, that's 
not great for demoing REBOL, but it did impress enough to download 
and try it.

I've owned a PC with a rather cheap motherboard for a few years and 
suffer under bad RAM performance. It was bought so I could use my 
then current PC133 RAM, but did not expect it to perform about half 
as fast as other motherboards with the same CPU.

My Mac Mini however is pretty fast for a G4 (runs circles around 
the 2.6 Ghz PC) and amazingly stable.

New Minis are Intel-based though, correct?

yes, there are no PPC machines left.

for the quality of the hardware, it's rather cheap. sure you can 
get the 300$ PC, but you get what you pay for under those circumstances.

Geomol, when my mac mini fan is running at max speed, it's about 
half as loud as my PC. During normal operation it's about as loud 
as a brick. :-)

Nice! I like silence, when I'm typing along on my keyboard.

geomol, speaking of which, did you see the new apple keyboard?

it has the same keys as the macbook

no

henrick - http://www.trettech.com/product_info.php?products_id=18762

Just a shameless plug from my site.

2 Mac mini (PPC) with 23" Cinema displays plus an iBook with Parallels 
running WinXP. The whole lot is networked via AIrport Express to 
an ADSL modem and a Brother MFC-8840D. I've had no problems and zero 
downtime for over two years. I switched from Windows/Linux about 
two years ago and haven't looked back. Some of the business advantages 
include:

	- Almost silent operation
	- Low power consumption
	- Small footprint
	- Zero admin
	- The WOW! factor when clients see your setup
	- Cheap
	- Out-of-the-box solution (no extra s/w required)


In fact, the only software I have purchased is iWorks and .Mac membership. 
The one issue I have is with Spreadsheets on the Mac minis. I don't 
want to use/pay for MS*Office and iWorks does not have a spreadsheet, 
so I'm using NeoOffice (aka OpenOffice) which is SLOWWWWW on PPC 
hardware. Works well on the (Intel) iBook though. I'll upgrade the 
Mac minis to Intel when Apple refreshes the line (probably when they 
release Leopard later this year).


Parallels is a must if, like me, you have to run or support legacy 
software running on Windows. Coherence mode puts the Windows task 
bar directly on the Mac OSX desktop and enables you to run Windows 
programs directly from it. It's hardware virtualization so it's fast, 
and removes the need for multiple machines. The ability to cut&paste 
directly from a Mac app to a Windows one is also pretty handy.


Bottom line is, if you like to play and endlessly tinker with stuff 
then WIndows/Linux is the way to go; if you want a tool that just 
works then get a Mac.

Thanks Ashley! That's valuable info. I do *not* like tinkering with 
hardware. I want a set-and-forget setup. The main issue is getting 
over the FUD of changing platforms in a big way.

Yep...I'm with Ashley.  If you want a computer to use, get a Mac. 
 If you want to stick it to the man, use GNU/Linux, but do so knowing 
that whizbang feature X will be lacking or require gnome level tinkering.

If you want to be a lemming, go Windows, sorry I mean, if you like 
mainstream, go Windows.

Ashley, can you explain in a little more detail how your setup works 
for you? i.e. why two minis, is the iBook just for traveling, etc.

as many monitors as big as you can afford :) possibly all on dvi 
digital

linux + wine works better than i had expected. but, of course, linux 
has its pains too, so only go for it if you know what to expect.

Gabriele; Really?  Is it just my small brain...but I can't focus 
on more than a webpage, an editor or altme  and gizmo and that all 
fits fine on on a 15" lcd.  When I work on the 21" that the graphic 
designer uses, I just get distracted.  I sit beside the 21, a 19 
but prefer to work on the 15.

well, right now i have three altme windows open. i can tell you, 
that two big monitors really help with that :)

also while working on qtask i used to have the debug console on one 
monitor and the editor / browser on the other. how much faster it 
was than when i was using one monitor only!

Ahh, you have one of those multi-tasking brains huh?  Juggle when 
you read  :)

it's not that you multitask much. it's that you have a bird-eye view 
of things.

altme does not have any way to notify you of new messages if the 
window is covered (let's not talk about the sound option ;)

this way, i notice new messages and can respond quicker (especially 
new messages from Carl ;)

Yeah, I find that too distracting.  At corporate they had walls of 
monitors.  I watched the staff ignore a big red dot for many minutes 
before I mentioned it.   They get swamped in data...but yeah I see 
your point.

another thing that has been *really* great is using vim vertical 
split after stretching it to cover both monitors :-) eg. vimdiff. 
it does not even compare to using it on a single monitor where you 
see only half of the line.

That I can see being useful...  I do stuggle with side by side compares...

Well, struggle's not the right word...but I can see it being better 
with diff -y

Without tabbed Konsole I might freak out a ltitle, but with...tabs 
15 inch is nice for focus

Enjoy the big screens.  :)

Ashley, can you explain in a little more detail how your setup works 
for you?

 Sure. I run a home office with two studies. Each has a Mac mini (plus 
 Cinema display) for day-to-day work. My study also has a TabletPC 
 connected to a 1280x1024 VGA LCD display. I use this for REBOL development 
 and demos away from home.


The iBook is located in the other study and is used by my better 
half when running Windows software related to our finance company 
(CRM/Sales software distributed via the professional body we belong 
to, no Mac or Linux option available). We also use the iBook when 
showing non-IT people stuff (e.g. a spreadsheet showing how much 
their portfolio could be worth if they geared it) and when attending 
training sessions.


The ADSL modem has an ethernet connection to Airport express, which 
in turn has the MFC plugged into its USB slot. The Mac's pick up 
the printer automatically, the TabletPC runs Bonjour and does the 
same. Everything, including the TabletPC, detected the Network without 
issue. It really has been as simple as, 1) Unpack, 2) Plug-in, 3) 
Use. I've also noticed that WinXP running on the iBook is a lot faster/smoother 
than on the TabletPC as it installs 'clean' (i.e. piggy-backs off 
the Mac's Network and Hardware support).


Large screens are a must if you write and or read a lot of documents. 
A 1920x1200 screen lets you do a slideshow on a PDF document and 
read the pages side-by-side. On wide screens I always have the task-bar/dock 
on the right to maximize the vertical display area.

Ahhh, a multi-room setup. Excellent info, and most helpful. Thanks 
very much Ashley.