Apropos of not much, last night I attended a lecture by Thomas
Gray, former UI designer for Mathematica and now Touch Press.  His
lecture was about his picture book "Molecules", and the related
$14 iPad app.  He spent five minutes showing off the molecular
simulation, a ball-and-spring model based on NAMD.  Gray grabbed
a few atoms with his fingers, set the models to vibrating, then
changed temperature or display speed (typically 120fs/s ).  Cute.

I was entranced, almost ready to submit to the dark side.  Then
I remembered that I didn't want to play games with his selected
molecules on an underpowered proprietary handheld device.  If I
want to play with molecules, I want more atoms (say long chains
of high density polyethelene) or harder problems (carbon
nanotube ropes).  I am willing to wait for a computation-enhanced
graphics coprocessor to grind through a much bigger problem
overnight.  Or better yet, ask someone competent to do it for me.

I write this, not so that you gadget freaks will go out and spend
money you don't have on an iPad and apps, but as a warning: some
of your colleagues and bosses will.  If you precompute something
more dazzling, your lab's computation budget might be spent on
nVidia Titan coprocessors rather than underpowered iPads.  For
extra dazzle, display on an Android tablet over the net.

This might be a reason to have a faster laptop ... but with 
gigabit ethernet in my lab, I'll do my computing on a server
and view the results over the network on a slower laptop.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          [log in to unmask]