Date:         Thu, 25 Jul 1996 20:25:19 -0700
Reply-To:     acocka@ccmail.orst.edu
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Alan C. Acock" <acocka@CCMAIL.ORST.EDU>
Organization: Human development and Family Sciences
Subject:      I'm thinking of switching from SAS to SPSS for Windows 95 for
              gaduate students???

I've used SAS for years and in the past it seemed a lot less limited
than SPSS. A year ago, I sorted and merged 10 30 MB files with 20,000
variables in each file and SAS was not bothered a bit. What are the
limits of SPSS for Windows 95. SAS 6.11 comes on a CD or a couple
hundred 3.5 in floppies. SPSS for Windows 95 comes on 11 3.5 disks.
I realize a lot of SAS is specialized stuff of no interest to social
statisticians, but 11 floppies seems pretty tiny.
I need students to be able to work with 600+ varialbes in multiple
datasets, each of which has over 50 mb of raw data and a record length
of about 10,000, and merge them. Is this sort of thing a problem. Also,
what
statistics is SPSS missing that SAS has?
PLEASE no flames. I installed SPSS for a new faculty member and played
with the tutorial and it seemd like it was far advanced compared to
SAS in the friendliness of the user interface.
Alan Acock
acocka@ccmail.orst.edu