Another data point, with the same caveats that Joe presented, and over
the second half of 1997, representing a 'recent' snapshot, for the
downloads of Sequin binaries, a tool for submitting and editing
nucleotide sequences to DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank (and from the NCBI site only)
... i.e. a tool of interest to molecular biologist, and available for
many platforms.
47% 932 Windows
37% 738 Macintosh
16% 318 Workstations
These numbers are biased in a variety of ways: We had 2 or 3 versions
in the last 6 months, but I uniq'ed by FTPing site, so multiples of the
same platform (different version) is counted as one hit. Some users may
get various platform (counted as multiple hits). The NCBI toolkit has
the source code for Sequin (not counted here) and the UNIX version (aka
"Workstations") can easily be installed centrally for multiple users.
my humble opinion: *All* platforms are alive and well in biology.
I also second Joe's disclaimer:
> DISCLAIMER. I do *not* think that this has anything to do with which system
> is "best", or which people posting in this newsgroup should feel puffed up
> about their superior choice of system, or their farsighted view of the
> future of humanity. Nor will I discuss these.
Personally, I use all three platforms ...
f.
--
| B.F. Francis Ouellette
| GenBank Coordinator
||francis at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
> From: joe at evolution.genetics.washington.edu (Joe Felsenstein)
> In article <67cocs$im4$1 at dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>,
>gilbertd at chipmunk.bio.indiana.edu (Don Gilbert) wrote:
> >Biology software and data: 20836 61% of total
> > MS Windows browser: 10302 -- 49% of biology
> > Macintosh browser : 5095 -- 25% of biology
> > XWindow browser : 1679 -- 8% of biology
> > remainder : 3760 -- 18%
> >
> >This is a quick and dirty look at platform usage.
> Workstations: 78 -- 7.9 % of total
> Macs/PowerMacs 298 -- 30.2 % of total
> Windows/DOS 612 -- 61.9 % of total
>> On the whole this is quite consistent with Don Gilbert's result but with
> fewer "unknowns" (I exclude about 1.5 % unknown). Note that Linux systems
> probably come under Workstations here as they will fetch C sources.
>> Of course there are a million reasons why this might be completely independent
> of what systems are actually being used out there (maybe everybody really
> uses Vaxes). But my first guess is that it is a reasonable reflection of
> the systems used by my user base. There is probably, however, an
> underrepresentation of Unix systems, as each Unix workstation probably
> serves more users than each PowerMac or Windows system.
>> I also note that this implies that the useage of Macs/PowerMacs is much higher
> in biology than in commerce, where Macs are said to have a much lower
> percentage penetration. I might add that in my own department we started
> out as mostly PC's, this changed about 1990 to mostly Macs (one by one, by
> individual labs deciding to change), and now they are wavering as the
> future of Apple seems in doubt, and putting in a few Windows machines.
>> DISCLAIMER. I do *not* think that this has anything to do with which system
> is "best", or which people posting in this newsgroup should feel puffed up
> about their superior choice of system, or their farsighted view of the
> future of humanity. Nor will I discuss these.
>> It just is a datum about which systems are getting used in biology right now.
>> --
> Joe Felsenstein joe at genetics.washington.edu> Dept. of Genetics, Univ. of Washington, Box 357360, Seattle, WA 98195-7360 USA
>>
