Message-ID: <AA32242A-62E0-401E-B271-529DD3F33CC1@hbs.edu>
Date: 2014-03-12T14:21:18Z
From: Gow, Ian
Subject: Suggested New Mac for Heavy R Use
In-Reply-To: <8FA5F77D-DBD1-43ED-8FE6-65879C0A1D45@r-project.org>
On 2014-03-11, 12:40 PM, "Simon Urbanek" <simon.urbanek at r-project.org>
wrote:
>>
> Today, you?re much better off getting a server/workstation which you can
> load with RAM and more cores for computing for the same price (running
> Linux, obviously, you really don?t want to do computing on
> Windows with R)
Running Linux ... or OS X.
> - and use your desktop/laptop just to access its computing power.
OP mentioned RStudio. RStudio Server makes this very easy and pleasant to
do (again this means Linux ... or OS X).
>> For some background - I have worked on Macs for years, but moved my
>> main work desktop to Windows about 2 years ago. I also do quite a bit
>> of work in QIIME - which can be done on the mac (not the PC) and is both
>> RAM and CPU intensive... so, I can benefit from multiple cores, large
>> RAM, etc. My 2011 MacBook Pro seems extremely sluggish at this point
>> when running basic tasks (probably need to do a fresh OS install),
>
> If you encounter sluggishness in OS X is pretty much always a disk issue.
> Wipe the disk or even better put in a SSD - it?s more than worth it - a
> whole different world.
>
> Cheers,
> Simon
-Ian