[Bioclusters] Workstation Selection for Bioinformatics Research

[Stephen Wicks]

--Apple-Mail-4-824654279
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset=US-ASCII;
	format=flowed

Hi Chip,

Whenever I see someone considering a Linux/Windows dual boot setup for 
a single job in biology, I recommend that they consider a Macintosh. 
OSX will give you fully supported access to all of the command line or 
X11 apps that you will need (including in your case RasMol, Povray, 
Molscript, raster3d etc.), and still let your users use 
Office/Photoshop etc. at the same time on the same machine and same OS. 
Networking and interoperability these days is a non-issue. The only 
caveat right now might be that the G4 towers are fast, but not as fast 
as the top end Intel-based solution.

You wanted options...

Stephen

Dr. Stephen Wicks,
Assistant Professor, Biology.
Boston College.
140 Commonwealth Ave.,
Chestnut Hill, MA. 02467.

Phone: 617 552 6851 (office)
Fax: 617 552 2011
Office: Rm 468 Higgins Hall
e-mail: swicks@bc.edu


On Thursday, April 10, 2003, at 12:39 PM, Chip Coward wrote:

> Greetings,
>
>     I am a researcher in bioinformatics at Drexel University and we are
> setting up a computational lab for research and teaching in 
> Computational
> Systems Biology/Bioinformatics. We are looking for workstations for 
> our lab
> using existing software tools or developing new tools to perform 
> molecular
> modeling/visualization (e.g. RasMol/Protein Explorer), searching the 
> genome,
> stochastic modelling/cellular automata, ect. We are considering both 
> SUN
> workstations and Dell workstations (Precision 450/Precision 650) 
> although we
> would be open to consider other platforms if there are compelling 
> reasons. I
> am writing to get input/information that will help us make a decision 
> on
> platform selection. I am leaning toward selecting the Dell Workstation 
> due
> to the theme that prevades these email lists about use of Linux which 
> seems
> to be the way the bioinformatics community is heading. If we purchased 
> the
> Dell system I would configure it to support both Windows and Linux 
> under the
> assumption that by supporting both operating systems, we would have 
> more
> options/flexibility for tool selection.
>
>    I would appreciate any thoughts or opinions that would help in our
> platform selection.
>
>    Thanks.
>
>          Chip Coward
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bioclusters maillist  -  Bioclusters@bioinformatics.org
> https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bioclusters
>
>


--Apple-Mail-4-824654279
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/enriched;
	charset=US-ASCII

<fontfamily><param>Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro</param>Hi Chip,


Whenever I see someone considering a Linux/Windows dual boot setup for
a single job in biology, I recommend that they consider a Macintosh.
OSX will give you fully supported access to all of the command line or
X11 apps that you will need (including in your case RasMol, Povray,
Molscript, raster3d etc.), and still let your users use
Office/Photoshop etc. at the same time on the same machine and same
OS. Networking and interoperability these days is a non-issue. The
only caveat right now might be that the G4 towers are fast, but not as
fast as the top end Intel-based solution. 


You wanted options...


Stephen


</fontfamily><fontfamily><param>Helvetica</param>Dr. Stephen Wicks, 

Assistant Professor, Biology.

Boston College.

140 Commonwealth Ave.,

Chestnut Hill, MA. 02467.


Phone: 617 552 6851 (office)

Fax: 617 552 2011

Office: Rm 468 Higgins Hall

e-mail: swicks@bc.edu

</fontfamily><fontfamily><param>Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro</param>

 </fontfamily>

<fontfamily><param>Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro</param>On</fontfamily>
<fontfamily><param>Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro</param>Thursday,</fontfamily>
<fontfamily><param>Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro</param>April</fontfamily>
<fontfamily><param>Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro</param>10,</fontfamily>
<fontfamily><param>Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro</param>2003,</fontfamily>
<fontfamily><param>Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro</param>at</fontfamily>
<fontfamily><param>Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro</param>12</fontfamily>:<fontfamily><param>Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro</param>39</fontfamily>
<fontfamily><param>Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro</param>PM,</fontfamily>
<fontfamily><param>Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro</param>Chip</fontfamily>
<fontfamily><param>Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro</param>Coward</fontfamily>
<fontfamily><param>Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro</param>wrote</fontfamily>:


<excerpt><fontfamily><param>Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro</param>Greetings,


    I am a researcher in bioinformatics at Drexel University and we are

setting up a computational lab for research and teaching in
Computational

Systems Biology/Bioinformatics. We are looking for workstations for
our lab

using existing software tools or developing new tools to perform
molecular

modeling/visualization (e.g. RasMol/Protein Explorer), searching the
genome,

stochastic modelling/cellular automata, ect. We are considering both
SUN

workstations and Dell workstations (Precision 450/Precision 650)
although we

would be open to consider other platforms if there are compelling
reasons. I

am writing to get input/information that will help us make a decision
on

platform selection. I am leaning toward selecting the Dell Workstation
due

to the theme that prevades these email lists about use of Linux which
seems

to be the way the bioinformatics community is heading. If we purchased
the

Dell system I would configure it to support both Windows and Linux
under the

assumption that by supporting both operating systems, we would have
more

options/flexibility for tool selection.


   I would appreciate any thoughts or opinions that would help in our

platform selection.


   Thanks.


         Chip Coward






_______________________________________________

Bioclusters maillist  -  Bioclusters@bioinformatics.org

https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bioclusters



</fontfamily></excerpt>


--Apple-Mail-4-824654279--