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| Subject: | Re: [gislist] GIS - notebook - Apple? |
| Date: |
07/08/2005 10:45:03 PM |
| From: |
Wolf Naegeli |
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At 12:04 PM -0700 7/8/05, Analisa Gunnell wrote:
>Anyway, the point of this email is that I am now getting a lot of
>people telling me that I should have purchased an Apple notebook,
>and simply bought a
>Windows emulator program in order to run my GIS app's.
Analisa,
It depends what GIS software you need. There are some GIS tools for
Mac OS X that are very good for specific purposes, and there is
GrassPro, a feature-rich general-purpose GIS, which requires zero
installation, is easy to use, and performs very well running natively
on a PowerBook.
But if you must have ArcGIS, GeoMedia, ERDAS IMAGINE, etc., while it
is somewhat possible to run them under Virtual PC, it is not
practical. Performance of GIS software under emulation is very poor,
and you are likely to have other problems.
I have a Dell laptop for ArcGIS and a 17" PowerBook, which is so much
better for almost everything else! I've been using Unix and PCs
longer than Macs, but I often control Wintel machines from the Mac
via Timbuktu remote control software, which is also handy for
exchanging files between the two operating systems.
VNC is another remote control solution, and it's free. I always use
it to manage our Solaris servers, but it works equally well with
Windows.
If I know I'll have high-speed Internet access, I don't need to
schlepp the Wintel laptop along, as I can remotely run ArcGIS back at
home base. By remotely running ArcGIS et al. on a mid-range desktop
Wintel machine, you get much more bang for the buck and as good or
better performance than is possible on the highest end, very
expensive laptops.
It will be close to a year before Apple will have an Intel-based
laptop, and it is not at all clear, at this time, how well it will
support dual booting. You'll still have much more convenience and
flexibility by running Windows applications in Virtual PC, rather
than dual-booting, but based on past experience, it may take
Microsoft many months after a PowerBook with Intel processor has been
released before they'll come out with a version of Virtual PC that
can actually use the new processor.
So, if you really must use Windows GIS software on a laptop, you'll
probably be best off with what you have for almost a year or longer.
Best wishes,
Wolf
Wolf Naegeli, PhD
Systems Architect
Southern Appalachian Information Node
National Biological Information Infrastructure
<http://sain.nbii.org>
Senior Research Scientist
Energy, Environment, and Resources Center
The University of Tennessee--Knoxville
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