Comments | gradstudents: Computer Capabilities for PC or MAC (Stata, SPSS)

juicy_eli in gradstudents

Computer Capabilities for PC or MAC (Stata, SPSS)

Jan 22, 2012 08:36

This is basically a question for those who are in the social sciences, or who use STATA and/or SPSS ( Read more... )

Comments 23

forgivenskeptic January 22 2012, 14:58:37 UTC

I'm not the best with these programs, as I'm a qualitative researcher. However, I use STATA on a PC in class, and then on my MAC to do my homework, and both seem to work just the same for me.

lostreality January 22 2012, 15:00:34 UTC

I remember many years ago I didn't get a mac because SAS wouldn't work on them, but I'm not sure about STATA and SPSS(which I think changed it's name to PSAW) so first thing would be to check whether they even have a MAC version of those programs.

In general I get the impression that PCs are better at the calculaty kind of thins while macs are better at video and photo kind of things, but I don't know how accurate that is.

tisiphone January 22 2012, 15:27:26 UTC

There's no real difference in the hardware of PCs and Macs these days, it's just about what kinds of software are popular. Statistics software makers are still somewhat hesitant about Mac, but it's not because of the platform itself. That said, SPSS, Stata, and SAS are all available for Mac.

juicy_eli January 22 2012, 16:37:45 UTC

Thanks. I was just a little concerned. I also read that it's a pain transferring files from Mac to Mac if they have a different kind of OS-X (example, saving the file on a mac with a particular OS-X type, then opening on a Mach with a different version of OS-X). Just something that I'm researching...

tisiphone January 22 2012, 16:39:26 UTC

I've never really had a problem with this. The one place it could be a problem is going from a file that was saved on a pre-Intel version of OS X (they used to use a different CPU), but that would be pretty rare these days.

Thread 6

tisiphone January 22 2012, 15:25:06 UTC

SPSS on Mac is almost exactly like SPSS is on Windows, there's just a slight blobbiness to the interface. If you know how to use it on Windows you will know how to use it on Mac. (Don't know about Stata.)

museclio January 22 2012, 15:46:40 UTC

What I did was run Parallels - I ran a PC version of SAS on my Mac - worked beautifully.

juicy_eli January 22 2012, 16:34:47 UTC

I just read about this online. Something to consider. Thanks so much.

roadtophd January 22 2012, 16:08:21 UTC

I've run SPSS on both macs and PCs. I haven't tried it recently but there have been issues with producing graphs on Macs. I think it was some sort of bug which they've hopefully fixed. This hasn't bothered me much because I hate SPSS graphs and try to use R instead but YMMV.