Question about hardware

[Kathie A Berghorn]

Dear Listers,

My Mac G4 has died a slow and painful death.  I am now searching for a
replacement.  Can anyone tell me whether the Macbook (the one without
separate graphics video ram) is adequate for running ImageJ and its macros
or do I need the Macbook Pro??  I image blood vessels and recreate 3D
representations of specific areas of placental angiogenesis.

Any recommendations would be appreciated, keeping in mind that price is an
issue.

Thanks,
Kathie

[David Hovis]

I use a CoreDuo MacBook upgraded to 2GB of memory.   It stomps all  
over my dual 2GHz G5 Powermac at home.

If you've been using a G4, the current Core2Duo MacBooks (newer than  
what I have) will be a substantial upgrade.

--David

On Apr 1, 2007, at 2:32 PM, Kathie A Berghorn wrote:

> Dear Listers,
>
> My Mac G4 has died a slow and painful death.  I am now searching for a
> replacement.  Can anyone tell me whether the Macbook (the one without
> separate graphics video ram) is adequate for running ImageJ and its  
> macros
> or do I need the Macbook Pro??  I image blood vessels and recreate 3D
> representations of specific areas of placental angiogenesis.
>
> Any recommendations would be appreciated, keeping in mind that  
> price is an
> issue.
>
> Thanks,
> Kathie

[audrey karperien-2]

Hi all.  I realize this may be against the law, but I use ImageJ on a PC, pentium 4, 2.6 GHz, 1 gig o' ram.   I need to upgrade, too.  I've read that some programs run slower, some faster on dual processors, but that dual cores are different.  Anybody have experience running imageJ on dual something or other PCs?

Audrey
----- Original Message ----
From: David Hovis <[hidden email]>
To: [hidden email]
Sent: Monday, April 2, 2007 8:56:36 AM
Subject: Re: Question about hardware

I use a CoreDuo MacBook upgraded to 2GB of memory.   It stomps all  
over my dual 2GHz G5 Powermac at home.

If you've been using a G4, the current Core2Duo MacBooks (newer than  
what I have) will be a substantial upgrade.

--David

On Apr 1, 2007, at 2:32 PM, Kathie A Berghorn wrote:

> Dear Listers,
>
> My Mac G4 has died a slow and painful death.  I am now searching for a
> replacement.  Can anyone tell me whether the Macbook (the one without
> separate graphics video ram) is adequate for running ImageJ and its  
> macros
> or do I need the Macbook Pro??  I image blood vessels and recreate 3D
> representations of specific areas of placental angiogenesis.
>
> Any recommendations would be appreciated, keeping in mind that  
> price is an
> issue.
>
> Thanks,
> Kathie

[Michael Doube-2]

audrey karperien wrote:
> Hi all.  I realize this may be against the law, but I use ImageJ on a PC, pentium 4, 2.6 GHz, 1 gig o' ram.
The Law of Mac, or actual law?

I run my stuff on pretty much similar to what you have, and it's usually
fine. More system RAM is always good... I've found that an increased
amount of cache RAM on the CPU makes quite a difference to the speed at
which some of my macros run.

Mike

[Albert Cardona]

In my experience, java applications in general run faster when more than one
processor (or core, doesn't matter) are present. Keep in mind java is
inherently multithreaded (in assigning tasks, and in cleaning up memory), and
so is ImageJ as well.

With two cores, two files can be opened at the same time (the hard drive can
deliver higher data bandwith than the processor can take per unit of time).

Macros are also more responsive; the graphical interface too.

Albert

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[kevin choo]

--- Kathie A Berghorn <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Dear Listers,
>
> My Mac G4 has died a slow and painful death.  I am
> now searching for a
> replacement.  Can anyone tell me whether the Macbook
> (the one without
> separate graphics video ram) is adequate for running
> ImageJ and its macros
> or do I need the Macbook Pro??  I image blood
> vessels and recreate 3D
> representations of specific areas of placental
> angiogenesis.
>
> Any recommendations would be appreciated, keeping in
> mind that price is an
> issue.
>
> Thanks,
> Kathie
>

since we're dealing with graphic here, you might
consider a Mac or PC with tons of RAM and a good
graphic card.  I'd go MacPro.


               
_________________________________________________________
捇誥轎煤G蚘眊ㄜ笢弊郔Ч轎煤滅馮毀嶼僵閉湮蚘眊
http://cn.mail.yahoo.com/?id=77072 

[Jeff Brandenburg]

I haven't done much with Windows, but on OS X, I can't detect any
difference between dual-processor and dual-core behavior.

Most (all?) ImageJ operations are single-threaded, but multiple
cores/processors allow you to perform some of these operations in
parallel.  Someone else mentioned opening multiple files at once; I
think I've operated on one image while performing a lengthy reslice
operation in another window.

Long ago, I hacked up a multithreaded version of the reslice operator,
and saw near-linear speedup from one to four cores on a quad G5.  
Contemporary ImageJ versions reslice much more efficiently, and I'm not
sure I'd see a similar speedup if I repeated this feat, but I still
hope to revisit it at some point.  We do a lot of work with large
stacks, and there are a lot of stack operations that operate on each
slice independently and sequentially.  Such operations are
"embarrassingly parallel", and should benefit greatly from
multithreading.

On Apr 2, 2007, at 11:40 AM, audrey karperien wrote:

> Hi all.  I realize this may be against the law, but I use ImageJ on a
> PC, pentium 4, 2.6 GHz, 1 gig o' ram.   I need to upgrade, too.  I've
> read that some programs run slower, some faster on dual processors,
> but that dual cores are different.  Anybody have experience running
> imageJ on dual something or other PCs?
--
        -jeffB (Jeff Brandenburg, Duke Center for In-Vivo Microscopy)

[Jeff Brandenburg]

On Apr 1, 2007, at 2:32 PM, Kathie A Berghorn wrote:

> Dear Listers,
>
> My Mac G4 has died a slow and painful death.  I am now searching for a
> replacement.  Can anyone tell me whether the Macbook (the one without
> separate graphics video ram) is adequate for running ImageJ and its
> macros
> or do I need the Macbook Pro??  I image blood vessels and recreate 3D
> representations of specific areas of placental angiogenesis.
>
> Any recommendations would be appreciated, keeping in mind that price
> is an
> issue.

I faced the same decision last fall, and went for the MacBook Amateur.  
I ran quite a few Java benchmarks, and there was very little difference
for most operations.  If you're using applications that take advantage
of native 3D libraries, the MBPro would do better, but I'm not aware of
any ImageJ tools that do so.  (As OS X Java implementations continue to
improve, this may change.)

My biggest regret from choosing the MacBook is the LCD display itself.  
I really miss the added screen space of the Pro, and I'm not happy with
the viewing angle of the MacBook screen -- moving my head up and down a
few inches *radically* changes the display's apparent gamma.  (This can
actually be a feature when reviewing images, as it's much quicker than
adjusting brightness and contrast from ImageJ!)  Of course, you can,
and probably should, connect an external display for critical work,
whichever laptop you choose.
--
        -jeffB (Jeff Brandenburg, Duke Center for In-Vivo Microscopy)