On Thu, October 2, 2014 10:48 am, Keith Keller wrote: > On 2014-10-02, Frank Cox <theatre at melvilletheatre.com> wrote: >> >> Since it has now become amazingly difficult to get a laptop if you're >> not planning to use Windows, at least around here, I'm wondering what >> the rest of you fine folks do when it comes to purchasing a laptop? >> Next time this comes up, I'd rather not have to spend all day on >> something that used to take fifteen minutes. > > I know this is probably a bit sacrilegious, but recently I have been > tending to get a Mac laptop, and run any linux distributions I need > inside a VM. OS X is (just barely) tolerable enough to be usable for > most of my desktop purposes. (It's not really cost-effective compared > to non-Apple laptops, unfortunately.) > Somebody said: having mac is like driving Ferrari. Subaru or Ford will get you there as well, so you just pay extra for chic. <rant> Having said that, I do have mac (paid by the Department) so I can support Mac users (and give exact instructions). My particular model of MacBook Pro has known NVIDIA problem (you can search for that): with latest MacOS it kernel panics inside nvidia driver (let's call it: nvidia driver is incompatible with that chip). So: 4 years old decently capable hardware can not be used with latest system. And Apple would not fix that as these machines are beyond 3 year of Apple "protection plan". I reject suggestions to stay with system one version older: the only reason for this laptop was for me to give mac users (whom my job is to recommend to get latest system + updates) exact directions, so _I_ have to have latest system for that. Therefore strong decision not to invest into any Apple hardware whenever possible. </rant> Valeri ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++