So, you want to build an MRI workstation?

Personal Workstatons

For personal workstations, and especially laptops, I recommend getting a Mac.

Here's why:

• AFNI, Caret, FreeSurfer, and most other major fMRI tools are being developed on the Mac now, so the latest updates will be available (and debugged) for the Mac before anything else.

• Macs are far easier for a non computer-guru to manage than other Unix systems.

• Macs will natively run much of the same software as Windows, including MS Office (although I recommend trying OpenOffice or NeoOffice, which are FREE, and quite good.) Hence, you don't need to maintain two separate systems (Unix and Windows) and constantly transfer data between them to go from analysis to publication.

  In the few cases where a particular software package runs only on Windows, there are other competing products available for the Mac that are just as good or better for most purposes. I.e. EndNote (Mac, Windows), vs. Reference Manager (Windows only), JMP (Mac, Windows, Linux) vs. Statistica (Windows only).

  Alternatively, if you're *really* hooked on a particular Windows-only application, you can run Windows under Parallels, a very fast and full-featured virtual machine. Windows running under Parallels is, for the most part, indistinguishable from Windows running standalone on a similar PC. Parallels also integrates the Windows environment with the Mac extremely well.

• There are currently no known viruses, spyware or adware that attack OS X. I.e., it's a safer environment than Windows, so if you can do all or most of your work on the Mac, you'll have fewer disruptions from infections, and fewer frustrations caused by anti-virus and anti-spyware programs slowing down your system, popping up update reminders, and telling you your license is expired.

Building a PC workstation or server

While Macs are easier to manage than other systems, they do have a few drawbacks.

For one thing, OS X does not multitask all that well in comparison to other Unix systems. If there are intensive analysis scripts running, the Mac user interface will become noticeably sluggish, even if the analysis scripts are running at lowered priority using "nice".

For servers, and for workstations supporting multiple simultaneous users, you may want to go with a PC instead.

PCs are also cheaper if you're looking for a highly configurable or expandable system. iMacs and Mac Minis are great for most purposes, and very competitively priced compared to PCs, but expandability is limited. To build a Mac with more than 4 gigs of RAM or more than one hard disk (I strongly advise against external disks - they tend to get abused), you would have to get a Mac Pro, which won't come cheap.

For our PC workstations, we're currently running FreeBSD, which I've found to be the fastest, smoothest, and most reliable server OS available. More discussion can be found here.

Installing Software

To install fMRI software on your FreeBSD or Mac workstation, visit the MRI Ports page.