Thanks to Caveman and Jeph for the replies.
I should mention that I am on a tight budget and have access to the
Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition software for free through the
Microsoft Dreamspark program and have not researched what it would
cost to buy a stand alone copy of XP Pro 64 but would guess it will be
close to the cost of the new machine unless I were OEM.
I struggled through the lengthy posts in the second link that Caveman
provided as most of the commentary relates to using more than 4GB
which is not something I will even try as it is the limit for Windows
Server 2003, Standard Edition (I understand that all 32 bit systems
have an addressable limit of 4GB but Enterprise and Datacenter
versions evidently work around this to make more RAM available to
applications, assuming the application is written to recognize it).
It appears that there is not a lot of difference between the Server
operating system and the XP Pro I had read about in past Stata posts
and memory limits. It appeared that one can set a switch in the
Server operating system for changing the allocation of the 4GB of
memory from the default of 2GB for applications and 2GB for the memory
kernel to 1GB for the kernel and 3GB for applications (/3GB). This
would imply that one could reach 3GB for Stata. However, a relevant
comment is this from the lengthy post section:
Here's the main problem with the 3GB switch: Applications must be
specifically compiled to look for and recognize the fact that they can
use 3GB instead of 2GB of memory. Right now the only apps that I know
of that have this intelligence are SQL Server and Exchange Server. So
for "regular" desktop apps, they'll continue to use a 2GB memory
space, and the kernel will use 1GB, and you'll have a 1GB "hole" right
in the middle of everything!
Thus, I am left wondering if Stata will use this extra GB. If anyone
has experience and can comment I would appreciate it before I go to
the trouble of learning how to install and get up to speed on Windows
Server 2003. Otherwise I will just continue to use Windows XP and pay
for a machine with only 2GB of RAM.
Tom
--
Thomas Jacobs
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