[R-SIG-Mac] Suggested New Mac for Heavy R Use

[Gow, Ian]

On 2014-03-11, 12:40 PM, "Simon Urbanek" <simon.urbanek at r-project.org>
wrote:

>> 
> Today, you¹re 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 don¹t 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 - it¹s more than worth it - a
> whole different world.
> 
> Cheers,
> Simon
-Ian