[R] ..of R, OS X, and linux

A.J. Rossini rossini at blindglobe.net
Thu Oct 31 06:50:58 CET 2002


The new(er,est?) Mac iBook2's are rather nice and cheap (and quiet --
faster and quieter than my wife's slightly older Sony R505, for
example, and comparably sized).

Plus, if you have the know-how, it makes the perfect Linux laptop :-)
(screams from OS-X and Mac die-hards in the background...), except for
a lack of ability to handle external displays and presentations (but
you really do want Mac OS X and the joys of Mac user friendly
auto-detect/config to make that part completely painless).

You still can run OS9 and OSX from within Linux, if you really want to
(MacOnLinux works, though I'm having problems with getting OS9 on > 8
bit graphics, but who needs it?).  

Now, if you are looking for a desktop replacement rather than a small
notebook ("small" was the operative word for me, 12" screen the max I
would tolerate), you probably want an AMD or Intel-based laptop.  The
TiBook is nice and classy, but probably not as cost effective.

best,
-tony




>>>>> "jan" == Jan de Leeuw <deleeuw at stat.ucla.edu> writes:

    jan> This would depend very much on the task. It is quite obvious that
    jan> for heavy floating point, especially double precision floating point
    jan> without tweaking, top of the line Pentium will be considerably
    jan> faster than current top of the line G4 (single processor). For ordinary
    jan> interactive computing, you will not see much difference, I think,
    jan> and for the really gigantic computing tasks you need to go to
    jan> multiple processors/multiple machines anyway.

    jan> On Wednesday, October 30, 2002, at 10:16 AM, Michaell Taylor wrote:

    >> 
    >> I am an avid linux user who is intrigued with apple's OS X.
    >> 
    >> I am now considering purchasing another laptop - which may provide
    >> an  excuse

    >> to get a feel of OS X. Of course there are lots of considerations,
    >> but  R

    >> command file processing speed is a major factor.
    >> 
    >> I know of many speed comparisons between G4/G3 and the various
    >> flavors  of

    >> Pentiums, but more useful would be one specifically utilizing R.
    >> 
    >> Has anyone conducted such a test?
    >> 
    >> =========================================
    >> Michaell Taylor, PhD
    >> 
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    >> 
    jan> ===
    jan> Jan de Leeuw; Professor and Chair, UCLA Department of Statistics;
    jan> Editor: Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Journal of Statistical
    jan> Software

    jan> US mail: 9432 Boelter Hall, Box 951554, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1554
    jan> phone (310)-825-9550;  fax (310)-206-5658;  email: deleeuw at stat.ucla.edu
    jan> homepage: http://gifi.stat.ucla.edu
    jan>    ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
    jan> -------------------------
    jan>            No matter where you go, there you are. --- Buckaroo Banzai
    jan>                     http://gifi.stat.ucla.edu/sounds/nomatter.au
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-- 
A.J. Rossini				Rsrch. Asst. Prof. of Biostatistics
U. of Washington Biostatistics		rossini at u.washington.edu	
FHCRC/SCHARP/HIV Vaccine Trials Net	rossini at scharp.org
-------------- http://software.biostat.washington.edu/ ----------------
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