[R] Minimum system requirements for running R on a Windows PC

[Jeff Newmiller]

This is a very hard question to answer. I can "run" R on my phone, but I cannot do my normal work with it there. R is likely to run on most computers to some degree... and cloud computing (e.g. parallel package with Amazon virtual computers) can be used to do what your laptop cannot do.

4-8GB of RAM should do almost any examples you need to do for a class.

Note that a netbook usually has a single processor... one nice solution if you find yourself compute-limited is to use the parallel package on your own computer to exercise the multiple processors available on most standard laptops. That would not be an option on most netbooks (though using external computing facilities is still an option... you just have to fall back on external resources sooner with a netbook).
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Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

On January 9, 2015 12:21:33 PM PST, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
>On 09/01/2015 2:23 PM, Alex Austin wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I was hoping that someone could help me with getting the information
>for
>> the minimal requirements my PC would need to run R.
>>
>> I have an ancient toshiba laptop and I am looking to get a new one
>before I
>> take a course in using R in scientific research this February but I
>want to
>> make sure I get something that can deal with it. For example, would a
>> netbook be adequate? Or would I need something more powerful?
>
>Netbooks vary a lot, but many of them use fairly strange processors and
>
>you'd probably have trouble running R.  The ones that are really just 
>small-form-factor laptops should be okay.
>
>But your old toshiba laptop is probably okay too --- as long as it is 
>running Windows XP or newer, it is probably fine for R.
>
>Duncan Murdoch
>
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