> They're grossly annoying because there are still things they either > can't do or seem to not want you to do. I sit back quietly on the list but once in a while I need to voice out.... we are running a large Xserve bioinformatics cluster for all sorts of applications, from back-end to front-end, from research to services, from genome annotation pipelines (read repeatmasking, blasting, genewising, hmmering,etc.etc.) to promoter characterisation, and... ...yes we did have some pains, yes we did have to recompile here and there and yes, my sysadmin is adored and admired by all of us, but none of the issues we had were unsurmountable, and so far we have not had a showstopper. So I would be very interested to know more about what they "can't do and don't want you to do" (except, of course, commercial packages where the vendor has not provided a binary for OS X, in which case I'd be happy to challenge whether their product can be emulated with open source software and a bit of good old programming glue) Now interestingly I notice the discussion was not even about server machines in the farm but about desktops. While there might be some reasons not to use Xserves for a large farm (though we do it successfully) there is definitely no reason I see to get a dual boot in one machine -> OS X rather than nightly patches, VMWare,etc. It is not just about getting a dual boot in one system, it is also about getting people that like user-friendly OSs to use tools usually available only in UNIX (and its reliability). > That probably answered no ones question and will just get the > workstation/apple/stinkpad people mad at me. Oh well. ;) Not mad, just interested. Mind you, before OS X came out I'd have used a Mac only as a heavy paper-holder and an iMac as a football... :) Elia --- Bioinformatics Program Manager Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory 1, Research Link Singapore 117604 Tel. +65 6874 4945 Fax. +65 6872 7007