> >> Where are the choices for non-x86? > > > > The only remaining alternative is Sparc. Everything else is either old > > (macppc) or expensive & unsupported (IA64).
I agree that sparc64 is currently the best alternative to the x86 architecture in i386 and amd64. For me, the biggest obstacles to buying a sparc64 machine are: * sparc64 machines the are significantly more expensive than their x86 counterparts. * There is no binary emulator that would allow me to run proprietary software like Mathematica on sparc64. (In contrast, I can run Mathematica on i386 with the Linux binary emulator.) NetBSD has a Solaris binary emulator for sparc64, so with a little work it might be possible to remove this second obstacle.
