[OS X TeX] What kind of operation is TeXing? (concerning hardware)

[Claus Gerhardt]

In that price range I don't know any comparable machine. Acoording to 
some tests by MacInTouch the Mac Mini was comparable in speed to an 
iMac G5 when the CPU was set to 'automatic'.

Memory is certainly the man bottleneck and from my experiences I would 
recommend that get the maximum amount possible, i.e., 1GB, already 
factory configured - Apple has reduced the memory prices recently.

I don't think that the relatively slow hard drive will be noticeable; 
it might be, if you would use Flashmode, but then a custom format might 
advisable. At the moment I am using one myself, since the chapter I am 
working at is a bit oversized, more than 70 pages, and having a custom 
format gives a small speed boost, which might be more dramatic, in case 
of a slow hard drive.

Claus

On Feb 3, 2005, at 17:40, Steffen Wolfrum wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am thinking about to buy a Mac Mini (1.42 MHz).
>
> Reading some reviews I noticed that a lack of this machine are 
> disk-intensive
> operations – for the hard drive seems to be relatively slow.
>
> As my very main target by buying a new Mac is to have TeX (ConTeXt, 
> XeTeX)
> executed fast (at a resonable price: no option for dual G5!), I would 
> like to
> ask you for an advice:
>
> What kind of operation is TeXing (i.e. running texexec --pdf in the 
> terminal)?
> What kind of components are important for this (fast processor, lots 
> of RAM,
> fast harddrive)?
>
> And is a Mac Mini (1.42 MHz) a good idea, or do you recommend an other 
> machine
> (at a comparable price)?
>
>
> Thank you for feeback and comments.
>
> Steffen
>
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