Pete

Hi All,

I'm looking to make the move and "go 64 bit".

I've sorta narrowed it down to 3 possible platforms:

Sun Workstation (Blade 1500)
AMD 64 bit CPU (running FreeBSD or Solaris)
Apple Mac G5

I'm really looking to replace my old and slow O2 workstation and I'm
tempted to go solaris because of its stability and consitent feel with
CDE. However, the O2 had really top notch audio and video support both
from a hardware point of view and from within the OS (commandline
tools like sfrecord etc).

So, my questions are:

Does the Blade Workstation range have this inherent multimedia
support? Does solaris come with audio stuff to support the hardware?
Can I add a professional sound card (optical, RCA inputs etc)?

I notice it has Firewire, but are there any expansion options to give
it video capture or audio support - PCI or otherwise?

Also, is the SunPCI Coprocessor card really a workable solution? I'd
like to replace as many of the machines I have with one big "does
everything" box - but I need to have windows around to stay compatable
with customers etc. VMware on FreeBSD or Virtual PC on Mac can be
pretty slow.

Side question:
If I go peecee (AMD) and run solaris is it likely to get a 64bit
version or will 64bit be SPARC only?

I know, I know *way* too many questions.......

Any advice gratefully accepted.

Thanks in advance.

Pete.