Hello,
I currently have a rather powerful HP Vectra (Pentium 4, 1.8 Ghz, and 2 Gb
in RAM), but I need to use large data sets (2-3 gb) and I am wondering
whether one should consider switching to the unix world. I do not have any
previous experience of working with Stata for Unix so it would be
interesting to know what other users think about this. Which platform
should one primarily consider when cost is a major concern? Are
Windows-based work-stations an alternative?
Best,
Yvonne
________________________________________________
Department of Sociology
Stockholm University
106 91 Stockholm
Sweden
IMHO a Linux solution is likely to give you much more bang for the buck
than any variant of Windows (including XP Pro). Your existing hardware
could be set up to dual-boot using any of the well-known versions of Linux:
SuSE, RedHat, Debian, etc. Stata on Linux is identical in performance to
Stata on any flavor of Unix. Costwise a Linux solution will be less
expensive than any Unix solution due to the large library of free (and
excellent) tools available for Linux.
