As mentioned previously, I have a shiny new machine to do my PhD work. It's delightful - the latest 27" iMac, with i7 processors, 16 gigs of RAM, and a fusion hard drive. It's delightfully fast.
It's especially nice for analysis work. Prior to the upgrade I had to run my analysis on a separate machine, wile I used my study machine. It was slow and painful - analysis runs took hours (close to a day in some cases). They now take minutes - I can import log data into my database at the rate of 1500 records per second.
The main advantage, though, is the pleasure I get from sitting down in front of it. With the previous machine, the lag that would happen when I wanted to do anything slowed me down, and caused me to avoid doing too much - sometimes the 20 seconds it would take to log in and get my application running meant that I would avoid doing it at all. Now, everything happens straight away.
It's another lesson - it's worth removing those little barriers to productivity. In my case, working full time means I can afford to throw money at the problem - making my working environment nicer by buying a new machine means the hours I can afford to spare for my PhD are that little bit more productive and pleasant.
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