I went through a lot of rigmarole with MS to get this hotfix last
week. It seemed to make memory management issues with Stata worse on
my computer (e.g. less memory available through "set mem" and
noticeably slower run times). Hopefully, SP3 will be somewhat better.
OK, now you've got me worried, and since I'm getting a new computer with
4GB ram this issue suddenly has relevance to me. If I have a monster file,
am I better off analyzing it with 8.2 if I don't need 9.0's features for
it? I'm reluctant to install a patch if, overall, it is going to make
things worse and/or isn't really necessary. It also seems a bit peculiar
that MS withdrew it because it is going to be part of SP3 - I am sure there
is all sorts of stuff that will be part of SP3 that is available as
individual patches in the meantime. Maybe they are hiding it precisely
because it is sub-optimal in its current form.
