I care a lot about R's speed. So I decided to give REvolution's R
(http://revolution-computing.com/) a try, which bills itself as an
optimized R. Note that I used the free version.
My machine is a Intel core 2 duo under Windows XP professional. The code
I run is in the end of this post.
First, the regular R 1.9. It takes 2 minutes and 6 seconds, CPU usage
50%
Next, REvolution's R. It takes 2 minutes and 10 seconds, CPU usage 100%.
In other words, REvolution's R consumes double the CPU with slightly
less speed.