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Re: st: Best laptop specifications to run version 9.0 and 10


From   David Kantor <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: Best laptop specifications to run version 9.0 and 10
Date   Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:51:03 -0400

At 03:45 PM 10/2/2008, Adrian wrote:
[...]

I want to know what are the best specifications for a laptop in order to run Stata with a big dataset, that keeps growing. I am not doing a lot of statistical simualtions, but from time to time need to run some marginal effects for logits/ probits and when I RESHAPE some of the databases, it takes over 20 minutes in my current laptop (over 3 years old).

One of the main issues i am facing in my current laptop, is that if keeping other applications running (excel, or outlook) makes stata to fail to save files back in my hardisk

Laptop is important because I telecomute and mobility is a plus. I guess the question can be framed as what is more important RAM versus proccessor speed? Or AMD versus Intel processors? Speed of hard disk?

is there any other configuration specification that I am overlooking?

I you have bought a new laptop recently to run stata, i appreciate if you can let me know the particular specs and budget

thanks

Adrian
Let me step around your question. When you experience these episodes of slow performance, you might be using virtual memory. If so, then a memory upgrade may be what you need, rather than a whole new computer. Generally a memory upgrade can significantly improve performance in many situations, and is much more economical than getting a new computer.

You said that the presence of other applications causes Stata to fail to do certain things. That shouldn't happen; it might slow thing down to a crawl, but it shouldn't cause any other effects within Stata. If that's really happening, I'd call it an operating system problem.

On the other hand, when I need to use large amount of memory, I'm inclined to close down all those other applications (and run only one instance of Stata) -- to avoid those problems.

If you do get a new computer, and if you run procedures that involve a lot of temp files (e.g., -reshape-), then you may want to go for a fast hard drive.

If you do get a new computer, and it's a PC, you may be forced into getting Vista, which some people find to be a disadvantage. That's a whole other story.

HTH
--David

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