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Re: st: Stata on Mac or PC


From   David Airey <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: Stata on Mac or PC
Date   Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:20:39 -0500

.

On OS X Leopard, you can create a Windows partition on your HD and boot natively to XP or Vista as you like. In this instance it is truly a WIndows PC, and actually beats a number of Windows PCs in performance. Alternatively, you can buy WIndows emulation software (Parallels is my favorite) that allows you to run OSs side by side, and actually copy and paste between windows and mac applications. This mode is a little slower, but is faster than slow PC chips running natively, and is very convenient. I run SAS Proc Mixed via Parallels and Mplus and I have had no issues. Currently not all SAS products support Vista, so you will want to run XP until 9.2 comes out. With regard to Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac, the latest update (12.1.1, I think) fixes a lot of bugs that made passing files back and forth with Office 2007 (like missing spaces). MS Office 2008 doesn't have visual basic support for Excel like MS Office 2007 does, although MS promised to put it "back in", how kind. So there are some issues, but they are disappearing as I write...I think the key to most potential switchers is the Windows is still available on the mac. Most find they gravitate towards spending most of their time in Leopard when they do buy a mac. Stata is great on the mac, and will be more so when the 64 bit version comes out. One thing that bothers me is the high cost to Stata with 8 cores. More cores are the future of computing, so is the future of Stata higher prices???



On Jun 26, 2008, at 10:07 AM, Data Analytics Corp. wrote:


Good morning,

I've been watching the exchange on this issue. I'm more curious right now about Phil's statement that "you can even run Linux or Windows (without a performance penalty and without dual-booting) if you need to" on an Intel MAC machine. I'm thinking about buying one even though I already have a ThinkPad running Vista. I'm looking for more input about running Windows software (Stata, S-Plus, SAS primarily) on the MAC as well as creating Word and PowerPoint files on the MAC that my Window's based client can read. Any comments or suggestions?

Thanks,

Walt


Phil Schumm wrote:

On Jun 26, 2008, at 8:24 AM, Stefano Costalli wrote:
I have a non-Stata question, but I need an answer to use stata at its best!
So far I have used Stata 9.2 SE on my laptop (IBM T series), but now I have to give it back to my department and I have some doubts. I'm choosing between the new version of IBM T Series and Macbook pro. My old IBM worked very well, but I like also the Macbook pro. Unfortunately I don't have colleagues or friends who use Stata on a Mac machine. Could anyone give me some feedback? Has anyone done any comparison? Good functioning of Stata will be an essential variable in my decision..

Thanks to StataCorp, you pretty much get the same Stata experience on any OS they support. There are some minor GUI differences, of course; being primarily an OS X user, I vastly prefer the OS X version (e.g., fonts look better, interface is cleaner, etc.). But, I'll admit, there's an element of subjectivity to this.

One current issue for OS X is that the 64-bit version of Stata for OS X is not yet available. It is, however, under active development, and may be available by the end of the year (see http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2008-05/msg00916.html) . Thus, unless you need the 64-bit version immediately, this shouldn't be an issue.

Given that Stata is pretty much the same on every platform, the choice then really boils down to other factors. And for scientific computing, an Intel Mac is a shining star. You have the full power of Unix with a nice GUI, and, with the Intel Macs, you can even run Linux or Windows (without a performance penalty and without dual- booting) if you need to.

One more thing: unless you're a die-hard Emacs (or perhaps even vi) user, one of the single best text editors available (TextMate) is only available for the Mac. TextMate makes coding, writing, etc. a dream, and is fantastic for editing Stata do-files. Even if I didn't already prefer OS X for other reasons, I'd still consider TextMate a reason to switch.


-- Phil

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--
________________________

Walter R. Paczkowski, Ph.D.
Data Analytics Corp.
44 Hamilton Lane
Plainsboro, NJ 08536
________________________
(V) 609-936-8999
(F) 609-936-3733
[email protected]
www.dataanalyticscorp.com

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