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R on netbooks et al?

12 messages · Bernd Dittmann, Philipp Pagel, Erik Iverson +8 more

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Dear useRs,

With the rise of netbooks and 'lifestyle laptops" I am tempted to get one of these to mainly run R on it. Processor power and hard disk space seem to be ok. What I wonder is the handling and feel with respect to R.

Has anyone here installed or is running R on one of these, and if so, what is your experience? Would it be more of a nice looking gadget than a feasable platform to do some stats on?

Many thanks,

Bernd
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On Thu, Mar 05, 2009 at 08:47:25AM +0000, herrdittmann at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
I have R on my ASUS eeePC 1000H under Debian Linux and it works just
fine. In my opinion the most limiting thing is the small keyboard.
Everything else (RAM, Screen, CPU power) is what you would expect
given the specs: Not the platform of choice for large-scale number 
crunching or writing elaborate programs but certainly good enough to
do a little work on the train/plane/hotel/...

cu
	Philipp
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I've installed Ubuntu, Emacs, and R on my Samsung NC10 with 2 GB RAM.  I think 
the keyboard is very usable on the NC10, and it has about 5-7 hours of battery 
life, which is also nice.  R runs just fine on it.  I'd consider paying extra 
for the Samsung just for the keyboard.
herrdittmann at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
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I use it on an ASUS EEE 701 PC! It works with some limitation, because this model have only 512mb of RAM. But it is working fine. The OS is Windows XP.

I think that the better netbooks is one from HP, this netbook have an normal keyboard.

Atenciosamente,
Leandro Lins Marino
Centro de Avalia??o
Funda??o CESGRANRIO
Rua Santa Alexandrina, 1011 - 2? andar
Rio de Janeiro, RJ - CEP: 20261-903
R (21) 2103-9600 R.:236 
( (21) 8777-7907
( leandro at cesgranrio.org.br

"Aquele que suporta o peso da sociedade
    ? precisamente aquele que obt?m
 as menores vantagens". (SMITH, Adam)

?  Antes de imprimir pense em sua responsabilidade e compromisso com o MEIO AMBIENTE 


-----Mensagem original-----
De: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] Em nome de Erik Iverson
Enviada em: quinta-feira, 5 de mar?o de 2009 11:03
Para: herrdittmann at yahoo.co.uk
Cc: r-help at r-project.org
Assunto: Re: [R] R on netbooks et al?

I've installed Ubuntu, Emacs, and R on my Samsung NC10 with 2 GB RAM.  I think 
the keyboard is very usable on the NC10, and it has about 5-7 hours of battery 
life, which is also nice.  R runs just fine on it.  I'd consider paying extra 
for the Samsung just for the keyboard.
herrdittmann at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
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#
I'm having similar experiences on my Acer Aspire One. Everything will
work good. Only thing that takes a lot of time is compiling R if you are
in the habit of doing so.
herrdittmann at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
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Leandro Marino wrote:
Ditto, except that I put Ubuntu Eee on my 701.  (Since renamed "Easy 
Peasy".... http://www.geteasypeasy.com/)

A nice thing about using Ubuntu is that R and a lot of common R packages 
are in the standard repositories.  Start with "apt-get install 
r-cran-base", and work from there with packages discovered via 
"apt-cache search r-cran".  Only thing I wish is that they'd update to R 
2.8.1...the repository still only has 2.7.2.
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May I ask what is the OS? Thanks.

2009/3/5 Erik Iverson <iverson at biostat.wisc.edu>:

  
    
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chaogai <chaogai at xs4all.nl> [Thu, Mar 05, 2009 at 07:04:19PM CET]:
On the Fedora version that came with my Acer Aspire One, I am even thinking of
compiling R itself as the current R version is 2.6.0 ...

Otherwise, everything seems fine and the keyboard is indeed the greatest
letdown so far (the tiny left mouse button a close second).
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Johannes Huesing wrote:
I did do that. Most practical is to get the R-devel from the
repositories. It is the wrong version, will bring what you need to build
regarding other dependencies. Then remove R-devel and you can get your
2.8.1 sources from CRAN.
Not sure about the exact names of the things. Now happy on Suse 11.1
after a brief fling with the Fedora 10.
1 day later
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At 08:47 05/03/2009, herrdittmann at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
One issue is whether you wish to use Linux or Windows. If you do use 
Linux I would advise picking a netbook with one of the standard 
distributions. The early EEE PC had Xandros and dire warnings about 
using the Debian repositiories. In fact I had no problem despite a 
total lack of experience although I am not sure what will happy with 
the recent move to lenny.
Michael Dewey
http://www.aghmed.fsnet.co.uk
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On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 7:08 AM, Michael Dewey <info at aghmed.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
Because I have used Debian Linux and Debian-based distributions like
Ubuntu for many years, I installed a eee-specific version of Ubuntu
within a day or two of getting an ASUS eee pc1000.  There are
currently at least two versions of Ubuntu, "easy peasy" and eeebuntu,
that are specific to the eee pc models.  I started with "easy peasy"
at the time it was called something else (Ubuntu eee?) and later
switched to eeebuntu.   In both cases packages for the latest versions
of R from the Ubuntu package repository on CRAN worked flawlessly.

I find the netbook to be very convenient.  Having a 5 hour battery
life and a weight of less than 3 pounds is wonderful.  I teach all of
my classes with it and even use it at home (attached to a monitor, USB
keyboard and mouse and an external hard drive) in lieu of a desktop
computer.  (I have been eyeing the "eee box" covetously but have not
yet convinced myself that I really need yet another computer).  I
develop R packages on it and don't really notice that it is
"under-powered" by today's standards.  Of course, when I started
computing and even when I started working with the S language the
memory capacity of computers was measured in kilobytes so the thought
of "only" 1Gb of memory doesn't cause me to shriek in horror.
#
On 08-Mar-09 17:44:18, Douglas Bates wrote:
Thanks for sharing your experiences, Doug. Given that devices like
the EeePC are marketed in terms of "less demanding" users, it's good
to know what it is like for a "hard user". Further related comments
would be welcome!

I have to agree about the RAM issue too. My once-trusty old Sharp
MZ-80B CP/M machine (early 1980s), with its 64KB and occupying
a good 0.25 m^3 of physical space, would have to be replicated
2^14 = 16384 times over to give the same RAM (and occupy some
400 m^3 of space, say 7.4m x 7.4m x 7.4m, or about the size of
my house). Now I have things on my desk, about the size of my
thumb, with 8MB in each.

Ted.

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Date: 08-Mar-09                                       Time: 18:20:45
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