[OS X TeX] New Mac

[Rowland McDonnell]

> Let me repeat my educated opinion that a Laptop should be considered  
> as a substitute for the real thing (fast computer, large monitor),  
> which has its merits  when travelling.
> 
> If you have the advantage of sitting at your own desk, you should use  
> a fast computer and a large monitor for texing (24" is sufficient,  
> but only Apple's 30" Cinema display will make texing fun).

[snip]

I first used OzTeX on a Macintosh Classic (9" mono display, 8MHz 68000,
1MB RAM, 40MB HDD; I preferred to run it on the SE/30s and IIfx the
department had, but I couldn't take one of those home with me).  40
minutes for a LaTeXing run is what I recall for the last big document I
did with that rig.  That's slow.  The Performa 475 I got later on could
do LaTeXing at non-glacial speed, but that was with its 25MHz 68LC040
CPU.  What CPUs do we have now?

I would say that all modern Macs are *VERY* fast and have large
monitors, even the laptops - all modern Macs have more than enough power
for doing any TeX jobs in such a short time that you shouldn't ever be
bothered by the wait.

The advantage of a desktop rather than a laptop is that the desktop
ought to last longer - they're more robust, all other things being
equal.  Some desktop Macs are more expandable than the laptops - that's
might be relevant.

I can't see any need for a monitor bigger than required to `Display
either the input text or the output file, but not both at the same
time'.  What's the need for a huge monitor?  The first place I used TeX
didn't even have a screen previewer available.

Rowland.
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