Soundquare:

While I think the PA6T is one of the most interesting chips out there I think there a few things to consider:
It is a dual core chip. But since SMP is not possible you'll have to wait to take some advanatge of teh 2nd core until some AMP appears. Then apps can take adavantge, but I guess it will happen too soon. Mind you the OS4 worls is known for optimistic guesses and announcements followed from uncounted delays and betas and confirmations that it works internally. How long is high speed usb working internally now? i don't know all I know is it is not there, after so many years... That's just not very convincing (of course in butterfly country it isn't all rosy and shiny, but at least there seems to be some common sense about real life and real life xpectations)...
- The PA6T is praobably a dead end. I wish it were not, but it seesm so. I know there are rumours that Apple licensed it to another comapny, but I haven't seen any confirmation.
- The PA6T is probably very expensive (teh X1000 keeps being ridiculous expensive). It is currently more or less exclusively used in mil products. The way costs get calculated in that business is a bit different tahn in the consumer market.
- It became de facto a mil product. I don't like that and wouln't buy a computer produced by Rheinmetall or LockheedMartin (one of the key customers of the PA6T) either.
- OS4 performs way worse than MorphOS. I wouldn't be surprised if MorphOS will perform better on a Mac mini G4 1500 than OS4 on one core of a 1.8 GHZ PA Semi.
- Many MorphOS apps are more polished and perfrom better.


You're a music guy and stated you appreciate/need some Win/(Mac?) audio applications. On MorphOS and OS4 there are a few nice apps, but you cannot do everything. Means, you need a Win/Mac maschine anyway.
I would suggest to go for a powerful x86 (core i7) to do the heavy tasks and closing some application gaps and keep a compact, tiny maschine for the other stuff (Mac mini or, hopefully Powerbook). Sure, these maschines are not new, but Apple had a good producton standard back then and tehy are *cheap* (my Mac mini costed me about 250 EUR 1.5 years ago) and I am again and again surprised how good it performs.

Energy uptake: Yes the Mac mini takes up a bit more than an averga e Atom setup, but not that much:
mac mini:
typical: 30-32 Watt
Max: ~50 Watt (CPU-load 100%, strong DVD/HD-Activity)
Min: 23-25 Watt (idle)
ATX-Standby: ~5 Watt


[ Edited by Zylesea on 2010/6/24 12:10 ]