Steve Harvey
> I am considering upgrading from v. 6 to v. 7, especially now that there
> is a new version of Lawrence Hamilton's book available geared to v. 7.
> Would appreciate comments from those of you who have upgraded since the
> new release: in what ways is it better? is the cost worthwhile? is
> there a v. 8, 9, 10... planned for release soon that would make current
> documentation irrelevant? I currently use Stata for analysis of
> international public health data: health surveys, etc.
>
> Please reply to [email protected] receive the digest version of the
> listserv.
Eric Raymond's FAQ at http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
-- which is one click away from the Statalist FAQ -- has this advice,
here edited very slightly:
======================
Don't ask people to reply by private email
Hackers believe solving problems should be a public, transparent process
during
which a first try at an answer can and should be corrected if someone more
knowledgeable notices that it is incomplete or incorrect. Also, they get
some
of their reward for being respondents from being seen to be competent and
knowledgeable by their peers.
When you ask for a private reply, you are disrupting both the process and
the
reward. Don't do this. It's the respondent's choice whether to reply
privately,
and if he or she does, it's usually because he thinks the question is too
ill-formed or obvious to be interesting to others.
There is one limited exception to this rule. If you think the question is
such
that you are likely to get a lot of answers that are all pretty similar,
then
the magic words are "email me and I'll summarize the answers for the group".
It
is courteous to try and save the mailing list or newsgroup a flood of
substantially identical postings, but you have to keep the promise to
summarize.
===================
In this spirit, I am replying to the list, and I will _also_ copy
to Steven Harvey.
> I am considering upgrading from v. 6 to v. 7, especially now that there
> is a new version of Lawrence Hamilton's book available geared to v. 7.
> Would appreciate comments from those of you who have upgraded since the
> new release: in what ways is it better? is the cost worthwhile? is
> there a v. 8, 9, 10... planned for release soon that would make current
> documentation irrelevant? I currently use Stata for analysis of
> international public health data: health surveys, etc.
In what ways is Stata 7 better? No user summary can compete with
http://www.stata.com/stata7/
The next release of Stata will be released, I guess, when it is ready. Stata
historians well know that it is not Stata Corp policy to announce releases
well
in advance, much though many users wish they knew when it was coming. But
Stata Corp always offer favourable upgrade terms to those who
just bought Stata n and then find that Stata (n+1) has been released.
Essentially, you will not lose out.
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