A word of warning about Macs and Unix workstations

If you're a Windows sysadmin like me and have heard:

Macs are faster than PCs
RISC is faster than CISC
Unix is faster than Windows
Mac OS X is faster than Windows

let me give you this bit of warning before you waste money and time buying 2nd hand Macs and Unix workstations to play with:

Macs and Unix (as long as they are NOT on Intel hardware) is not as fast as Windows.

I've used Sun Ultra Sparc 5's, and Blades 100 and 150. These machines cannot do 1280x1024x32 so using them on your 19inch LCD is a no-no unless you're happy to go with a lower resolution or colour-depth. Secondly their video performance is dreadful. A great set of real world tests is to use Firefox to visit the following websites:

* smh.com.au
* hsv.com.au
* trailers.apple.com

Don't just visit the above sites. Scroll thru the pages, load up links with tab browsing and view video clips and PDF files.

The Apple PowerMac G4s can do 1280x1024x32 easily. Problem is, all of them suck when it comes to scrolling thru complex web pages like smh.com.au and PDF files. Similarly, emails with graphics imbedded take a long time to display compared to text only emails.

If you're going to get a Mac or Unix workstation to familiarise yourself with the Operating System Environment do yourself a favour and make sure it comes with an Intel or x86 chip.