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
On Thu, Mar 05, 2009 at 08:47:25AM +0000, herrdittmann at yahoo.co.uk wrote:> 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?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 -- Dr. Philipp Pagel Lehrstuhl f?r Genomorientierte Bioinformatik Technische Universit?t M?nchen Wissenschaftszentrum Weihenstephan 85350 Freising, Germany http://mips.gsf.de/staff/pagel
herrdittmann at yahoo.co.uk wrote:> > 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? >I've got R on my little EeePC as well. Great for most jobs and I highly recommend a DC/DC convertor for plugging into your car's cigarette lighter to get around the crap battery problem. Jim
Dear Bernd, I fully subscribe to Jim and Philipp's posts, plus a note on operating systems, case you're a Windows user. I've got an eeePC 900, standard Xandros Linux version, happily running R. With LaTeX-Beamer installed, weighing less than 1 Kg and with WiFi this makes for an excellent companion on conferences and meetings. You can also get models with built-in UMTS from telecoms. As this was my first Linux box in my Windows-useR experience, the feel of R was quite different at the beginning; then I started using Emacs+ESS and i liked it so much that I took it over to Windows as well, so now the feel is the same for me irrespective of the OS I'm on (plus much, much more! but maybe you know that already). As for the general user experience, be careful that SDD performance is very erratic across models, which affects almost everything. See this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy8ZRoGbCxE if you like. My machine boots in 25'' and is reasonably responsive anyway (file manager takes some 5-10'' to open up, but it's one of the slowest things; R loads immediately; Emacs takes 5-10'' as well). HTH Giovanni ## original message: Message: 147 Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 10:31:39 +0100 From: Philipp Pagel <p.pagel at wzw.tum.de> Subject: Re: [R] R on netbooks et al? To: r-help at r-project.org Message-ID: <20090305093139.GA6973 at localhost> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 On Thu, Mar 05, 2009 at 08:47:25AM +0000, herrdittmann at yahoo.co.uk wrote:> 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?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 -- Dr. Philipp Pagel Lehrstuhl f?r Genomorientierte Bioinformatik Technische Universit?t M?nchen Wissenschaftszentrum Weihenstephan 85350 Freising, Germany http://mips.gsf.de/staff/pagel ########## Ai sensi del D.Lgs. 196/2003 si precisa che le informazi...{{dropped:13}}
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:> 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 > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
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:> 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 > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >
At 08:47 05/03/2009, herrdittmann at yahoo.co.uk wrote:>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?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.>Many thanks, > >BerndMichael Dewey http://www.aghmed.fsnet.co.uk
Hi, For what it's worth, it's a trivial operation to replace the on-board 1Gb with a 2Gb module, which doesn't cost too much. Okay, being a bit demanding I also replaced the hard-disk with a 320 Gb one to harbour a dual boot ubuntu-eee / windows XP. But that does give a machine which is a worthy replacement of the once state-of-the art Acer Travelmate 800 I used to have. I happily run R and even virtual machines using VMWare. Truth be told, it being a netbook, you may want to rely on and connect to external computational resources for the real heavy stuff. Cheers, Tsjerk On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 7:20 PM, Ted Harding <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk> wrote:> On 08-Mar-09 17:44:18, Douglas Bates wrote: >> On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 7:08 AM, Michael Dewey <info at aghmed.fsnet.co.uk> >> wrote: >>> At 08:47 05/03/2009, herrdittmann at yahoo.co.uk wrote: >>>> 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? >>> >>> 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. >> >> 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. > > 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. > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk> > Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 > Date: 08-Mar-09 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Time: 18:20:45 > ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >-- Tsjerk A. Wassenaar, Ph.D. Junior UD (post-doc) Biomolecular NMR, Bijvoet Center Utrecht University Padualaan 8 3584 CH Utrecht The Netherlands P: +31-30-2539931 F: +31-30-2537623
Dear Dirk, As a Ubuntu newbie I was going by the information on the following couple of webpages which talk about the need to turn the i386 binaries into binaries for lpia architecture: http://mydellmini.com/forum/i386-packages-on-lpia--t3540s75.html http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6528287#post6528287 As I'm new to all this (a gradually reducing Windows addict)I was not sure which files from CRAN were needed for the 386 binary so opted not to use the script mentioned on the above webpage. R2.6.2 appears in the package manager on the Mini 9 but I decided I'd give compiling the latest version a shot. As I say I'm rather new to this so if anyone has any experience which suggests that the above is not relevant and you can just use the ubuntu binaries directly, I'd be happy to hear about it. All the best, Paul Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:> Paul, > > On 20 March 2009 at 13:41, Paul Norris wrote: > | Just to add to this thread (with my first ever R list post). I got a > | Dell Mini 9 (I think it is called the Inspirion 910 in the US?) > > So, it's sold as Dell Mini 9. I like those too and am considering buying one. > > | yesterday running Ubuntu with 2GB and a 32 GB SSD. > | > | While the machine came with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS it is a version which has > | been compiled by Dell to suit the architecture of the Atom processor. > | As such, standard 386 binaries seem to cause problems and programs need > > That's the first I hear of that. Can you back that up with that website, > mailing list, ... discussion? > > To the very best of my knowledge, all x86 compatibles "just work", including > say the Via chips in some super-small mobos. All AMD and Intel chips work. > > However, the kernel and libc switched a while back to effectively only (as I > recall) 586 and later are now supported. But all new chips work. > > | to be recompiled. Downloaded R 8.2.1 source from CRAN this morning and > | it all compiled without error and runs very nicely (graphics windows > | seem appropriately sized for the screen etc). > > Could you possibly try the Ubuntu binaries from CRAN ? They should "just > work". Vincent and Michael do a very nice job of recompiling my Debian > packages. I actually run these Ubuntu builds at work (on amd64). > > Cheers, Dirk (aka the R maintainer for Debian and hence effectively for Ubuntu) >-- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.