[rescue] PowerMac recommendations?

[Joshua Boyd]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 12:10:44PM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:
> On Apr 20, 2004, at 11:36 AM, Joshua Boyd wrote:
> >But seriously, what's wrong with using linux of Intel here?
> 
>   Uhhhhhhhhh, because PCs suck?
> 
>   A little late for your morning coffee, eh Josh? ;)

Yes, PCs generally suck, but will 3 PCs (or two and something like that
audiomedia appliance) running linux suck more than a single Mac trying
to do three seperate somewhat performance intensive tasks at once?
Sure, the Mac is like 10xs more powerfull than needed for any single
task, but can it juggle the tasks well enough to do the three
simultaneously without blips, and how would you control them anyway
(presuming that the presentation software doesn't support control on way
head and display on a second head)?

For what he describes, three lintel machines wouldn't be my first
choise (*) But given volume constraints, and an extremely low budget,
lintel using used notebooks is what comes to mind first. 

(*) which might be a beefed up U5 running linux for the video capture
(using a hardware compression card or firewire), and an I2 or Octane for
the presentation stuff (with a console extender so that machine would be
in a closet nearby), and either another SGI or some PCI linux system for
the audio, to support a sound card with very clean audio outputs, though 
we could perhaps use any machine that has USB and a reasonable OS that
supports USB audio (which says to me Mac OS X, Linux, or perhaps
Solaris).